Modern Hieroglyphics
As more and more people began communicating through text based systems the lack of emotion became apparent. How is it possible transmit our happiness, sadness, anger and even our hunger without any misinterpretation? How can we ever get past a language barrier? Emotions are universal. A smiley face in English resonates the same meaning in Vietnamese, German or any other language. Emoji have evolved to fill in this gap. Typing in pictographs allows society to create a new type of communication that is concise, emotionally based and completely multilingual.
The younger generations are leading an evolution in common communications practices and turning our world into an emoji culture. As visual-based communications continue to grow so is the use of emojis. Oxford Dictionaries has named an emoji, “Face with Tears of Joy”, as the word of the year. It’s the first time ever a pictograph was named the word of the year. 2015 also happens to be the year that some call the tipping point for emoji. Emoji were born in Japan in the late 1990’s and by 2011 the emoji keyboard became an international standard on iOS. Now most operating systems have access to 800 emojis. The use of emoji has grown from an audience of zero to more than half of the population in some countries over the past decade. We can see that the emoji percent usage took off as it became available to different operating systems and the usage is directly proportional to the percentage of the population with smart phones.
Individuals have started to imitate the behaviors of others and adopt emoji in their communication process because there are direct benefits. Using emoji allows people to communicate and transmit their emotions in a way that can not be misinterpreted. It also allows people to become aware of emotions. However not all emojis are used for emotional context. Most of them are for fun. Some companies are even using emoji for marketing campaigns. You can even order pizza by texting a pizza emoji to a vendor. Utilizing emoji has become a key way to interact and share. It is no longer just a “teen thing”. The fun and colorful pictographs are now embraced by millions including presidents, celebrities, and brands.
Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/17/crying-with-laughter-how-we-learned-how-to-speak-emoji
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/adhutchinson/2015-07-23/emoji-movie-rise-emoji-use-and-how-brands-can-capitalize-growing