World Emoji Day - Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Communication in the Internet Age now goes far beyond pressing send on a simple text message. Check your social media feeds or text messages… how many smiley faces, flying hearts, avocados, and unicorns do you see? These iconic little Japanese images, known as emoji, are more popular on the internet today than ever before—so naturally, they have their own special day. Recognized on July 17, World Emoji Day is a holiday that validates our obsession over these ubiquitous graphic icons. While sometimes they may seem silly, according to various psychologists and researchers, they may play a vital role in the way we communicate today. In fact, Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2015 was the “😂” emoji. Light up your friends’ phones with all the emojis you want today — it’s a healthy obsession. 😉

Emoji’s have been used since the beginning of the internet to transmit emotion in the written medium. As internet technology advanced, so did the use of the emoji, with previously pure text bits of ascii art turning into full-fledged animated faces and symbols. We’ve all used them, and we’re excited for the future of them! World Emoji day celebrates the history of these emotional expressions, and encourages you to be exceptionally emotive! After all, it’s always nice to let someone know how you’re feeling when you write, isn’t it? Emoji’s are just one more way!

History of Emoji Day

Emoji day was put together as a celebration of the emoji, a textual expression of emotion that came about in the old days of Japanese mobile phones. From there, these pictographic displays of emotion exploded into worldwide use. The word “Emoji” is derived from the Japanese words e (for picture) and moji (for character), apparently the seeming connection to the words emotion and emoticon are purely incidental! Companies like NTT DoCoMo,

Companies like NTT DoCoMo, au, and Vodafone first created the graphical characters (though Vodafone was Softbank Mobile at the time). Eventually, in 2000, a library of over 1000 smiley graphics were released into the world, and ever since then it has been continuously enhanced. Now emoji’s can be found on every imaginable device, and in an ever growing list of styles themes, and characters. Expressing yourself has never been easier! The date of Emoji Day honors the date shown on the iOS Calendar Emoji, it even has an anthem! (Check it out on YouTube, it’s actually pretty catchy!) It’s funny, isn’t it, how the history goes around in circles? Long ago the world used to communicate in images, before alphabetic languages were developed, and now in the modern age we’re back to using them again! Of course, now they’re a lot more technologically advanced and move on their own, but they’re still an amazing way of sharing how you feel and making people laugh.

The date of Emoji Day honors the date shown on the iOS Calendar Emoji, it even has an anthem! (Check it out on YouTube, it’s actually pretty catchy!) It’s funny, isn’t it, how the history goes around in circles? Long ago the world used to communicate in images, before alphabetic languages were developed, and now in the modern age we’re back to using them again! Of course, now they’re a lot more technologically advanced and move on their own, but they’re still an amazing way of sharing how you feel and making people laugh.

How to celebrate Emoji Day

Celebrating Emoji day is fun and offers limitless opportunities for creativity. With the broad array of emoji’s available today you can tell entire stories in pictograph, without using a single word. Celebrate Emoji Day by using all the animated images you can with your friend or friends, tweet them on twitter, post them on Facebook, text them in your messenger, and just generally fill the world with the wonderful, amazing, silly images that are emoji!