World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17 every year, to acknowledge the role of emojis to communicate through digital media. In this era of digitally communicating, it’s hard to imagine a world without emojis. Be it a thumbs up for a job done well or a smiley to express happiness, emojis have become an essential component of expressing our feelings through text itself.

The day is observed around the world especially by social media users. Usually, the social media enthusiast held up campaigns, themed parties and competitions to celebrate the day.

History

The word emoji comes from the Japanese term that translates to “picture word” which was created by Shigetaka Kurita in the 1990s for NTT Docomo. However, World Emoji Day was first observed on July 17 in 2014, when the founder of Emojipedia, Jeremy Burge, proposed its celebration. Jeremy Burge established the day to highlight the increasing use of emojis.

Significance

As non-verbal communication plays a crucial role in the communication process, emojis act the same in a text message or post on social media. The day has been observed to acknowledge the importance of it.

This day also highlights the use of emojis as a global language that needs no boundaries or has no language barriers to be understood. People from different backgrounds, ethnicity and languages can communicate their emotions through emojis in digital mediums.

Interesting Facts about World Emoji Day

The date of World Emoji Day was chosen as July 17, as this is the date displayed on the “Calendar” emoji on different platforms.

Shigetaka Kurita created 176 emojis at first for NTT Docomo in 1999.

There are over 3,000 emojis recognised by Unicode Standard by far.

The “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji is considered to be the most popular emoji as it is used most frequently.

Apple introduced different skin tones for emoji in 2015.

The set of emoji created by Shigetaka Kurita is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The laughing in-joy emoji was named the 2015 Word of the Year by the Oxford English Dictionary, which was the first time a pictograph was featured in the dictionary.

There is a World Emoji Award that is observed annually. Some of the categories presented are the most popular emoji, the Best emoji app or keyboard, and the Best new emoji.

(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)