An Emoji Kind of World

I must admit I am not a big emoji person. Maybe I will do a :) everyone once in awhile to ensure my meaning cannot be misconstrued. I vaguely became aware of the emoji option in texting about two years ago (maybe). Then I started happily giving a thumbs up or a party symbol for someone’s birthday, but that is it.

The other day I scrolled through the iPhone 7’s emoji options for texting and was blown away. A rough count of 1,500 emojis! And I have never downloaded the optional ones. There already is The Emoji Movie. Emoji toys and knickknacks. There are 9,000 plus books with emoji in the title. iTunes has thousands of items in songs, albums, and podcasts that have the word in the title.

This got me thinking about how this will affect book and journal publishing specifically, and communications in general.

Undoubtedly, I am overlooking the fun aspect of emojis and looking at it at from too utilitarian point-of-view. Given that, how could the emoji generation change publishing?

Will they be used in only lighter fare with publishing? Will emojis (or really symbols) start to take the place or represent certain words or concepts? Ironically, we may be closing the loop from the hieroglyphics of Egypt with meaning laden symbols such as the smiley face (and the countless nuances of each).

Would emojis working their way into more serious communication be a good thing or bad?

For the fun part:

Here is the Wikipedia article on emojis.

Here is the Emojipedia.

And, drum roll, the first baby named for an emoji.