Last week we spoke about the direction our visual language was taking on the web, and the potential it has to homogenize and revert our language.
This week, Unicode Consortium, the folks responsible for the regulation of text foundations for computers, launched a fundraising campaign that allows you to adopt over 120,000 different symbols, characters and emojis for a 12 month period.
The money raised goes towards further maintenance and growth of the Unicode Consortium. They will be able to encode and preserve more historical scripts, such as the hieroglyphs, as well as provide more support for developing new digital languages by hiring software engineers, researchers and translators.
The cultural shift in visual communication created by the popularity of emojis has spawned a new type of dialogue between businesses and consumers, and it’s usually lighthearted and fun.
It’s not just brands either, but artists as well. A few months ago when Drake released his back-to-back diss tracks towards Meek Mill, he used the battery emoji to emphasize “Charged Up”. The week after the release, Instagram reported a 20% increase in the use of the emoji, showing the potential for name or brand affiliation with emojis.
Although these sponsorships may only come with bragging rights for a year, it’s an interesting way to approach fundraising. You can’t ever own the emoji, but you also can’t actually own those stars you can buy on star registries. IBM has already reserved the cloud emoji, and internet pioneer and so-called founding father, Vint Cerf, has claimed the Vulcan Salute emoji. We will have to wait to see how the sponsors decide to use their emojis before coming up with any conclusions about its benefits, but supporting the progress of the Unicode Consortium is a good place to start.
Like we said last time, there are endless ways to express yourself with words, so don’t be intimidated, take advantage of the clear correspondence.
Last week we spoke about the direction our visual language was taking on the web, and the potential it has to homogenize and revert our language.
This week, Unicode Consortium, the folks responsible for the regulation of text foundations for computers, launched a fundraising campaign that allows you to adopt over 120,000 different symbols, characters and emojis for a 12 month period.
The money raised goes towards further maintenance and growth of the Unicode Consortium. They will be able to encode and preserve more historical scripts, such as the hieroglyphs, as well as provide more support for developing new digital languages by hiring software engineers, researchers and translators.
The cultural shift in visual communication created by the popularity of emojis has spawned a new type of dialogue between businesses and consumers, and it’s usually lighthearted and fun.
It’s not just brands either, but artists as well. A few months ago when Drake released his back-to-back diss tracks towards Meek Mill, he used the battery emoji to emphasize “Charged Up”. The week after the release, Instagram reported a 20% increase in the use of the emoji, showing the potential for name or brand affiliation with emojis.
Although these sponsorships may only come with bragging rights for a year, it’s an interesting way to approach fundraising. You can't ever own the emoji, but you also can't actually own those stars you can buy on star registries. IBM has already reserved the cloud emoji, and internet pioneer and so-called founding father, Vint Cerf, has claimed the Vulcan Salute emoji. We will have to wait to see how the sponsors decide to use their emojis before coming up with any conclusions about its benefits, but supporting the progress of the Unicode Consortium is a good place to start.
Like we said last time, there are endless ways to express yourself with words, so don’t be intimidated, take advantage of the clear correspondence.
