A Brief History of Emoji

Where exactly did emoji come from? And how are they changing the way we communicate?

With billions of emoji sent and received every day, it’s impossible to deny our love affair with these fun little picture-characters. But what's the history behind them, and how do they enhance the way we relate to each other?

In this short film, narrated by Lauren Laverne, The Open University explores the ideas behind the success of emoji, and explains why they’ve become such an important part of modern-day communication.

World Emoji Day hub

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[HeronSight]

This review of the emojii movie is very good.

[mickeyray]

It didnt rell me what an emoji was. Guess i'll have to continue elsewhere😮

[UnproductiveSunbeam]

This told me nothing about the history of emojis. Not who started designing them or why, beyond the fact that Japanese teenagers sent hearts. It also didn't talk about the way we got to having such a wide range of emojis for different skin tones and sexual orientations, which is a fairly interesting and useful story, just that we now have them. Ah well, the animations were nice

[TheTechreviewchannel]

Nice video :) but you missed out the invention of paper in China as a major milestone :)

[ReganMarcelis]

Actually they started with Tupac Shakur. Look it up, letters to his girlfriend at the time in 1980's he was drawing up ' full, super detailed and repetitive emoji's in love letters that sadly sold for ALLOT. He was amazing and not as he seemed but only Smart folks know this.... ;)

[ZAASTA]

I only clicked because my teacher said that😒