Daniel Saidi • 8/13/2024

The (too?) complex state of Emojis in 2024

This article examines the technical and design complexity of the modern Emoji standard, highlighting the exponential growth in variants due to skin tone, gender, and direction support. It uses Apple's iOS 17.4 update—which added new emojis but also removed skin tone and gender variants for family emojis—as a case study to argue that the standard may have become unsustainable. The piece delves into the combinatorial explosion of illustrations required and the resulting user experience challenges.

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#unicode #Io #Emoji Standard