The power of emoji | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Emoji have become an essential layer of digital communication, helping convey emotion, tone, body language, and intent that are otherwise difficult to express through text. Jennifer Daniel, chair of Unicode’s Emoji Subcommittee, argues that emoji do not create new ideas; they translate long-standing human concepts into a flexible visual form. Because Unicode characters are permanent and globally interoperable, new emoji must be selected carefully, with an emphasis on broad usefulness and future relevance.

Emoji supplement face-to-face communication

• Digital communication lacks cues such as:
  • Rhythm and cadence
  • Volume
  • Eye contact
  • Body language
• Emoji help restore some of these signals by clarifying a message’s emotional intent and tone.
• As people become more familiar with emoji, choosing and placing them becomes almost instinctive.

Emoji are contextual rather than a universal language

• Emoji represent concepts that have existed throughout written and visual communication, rather than inventing new ones.
• Their meanings can shift depending on context and cultural use.
• For example, ❤️‍🔥 might suggest religious devotion, heartburn, or desire.
• The way people actually use emoji often differs from how they believe they use them.

Unicode makes emoji permanent

• The Emoji Subcommittee operates within the Unicode Consortium, which standardizes digital writing systems worldwide.
• Adding an emoji creates a permanent Unicode code point:
  • It cannot be removed or deprecated.
  • There are no “do-overs” if an idea becomes outdated.
• This permanence contrasts with the fast, experimental cycle common in technology.
• Unicode therefore tends to formalize concepts that already exist instead of rapidly creating new ones.

Selecting useful, future-proof emoji

• With more than 3,500 emoji, storage and implementation complexity are becoming constraints.
• The committee is shifting away from overly specific objects—such as buckets, saws, and shorts—and toward symbols that support human expression and connection.
• Strong candidates are:
  • Broadly relevant across cultures
  • Open to multiple meanings
  • Useful metaphorically or symbolically
  • Combinable with existing emoji to express new ideas
• Adding one narrowly defined character can create pressure for related additions, such as needing both golden retriever and poodle emoji.
• As a result, many valid proposals are rejected when their meaning is too specific or already expressible through existing characters.

Emoji work best as flexible building blocks for communication, not as an attempt to represent every object or concept. Designers and standards bodies should prioritize symbols that are widely understandable, culturally adaptable, and capable of expressing multiple layers of human emotion and intent.