Emojis have become an integral part of our everyday communication. It's not just mothers who have discovered them for themselves and decorate WhatsApp messages, which could be simple coffee dates, with 27 different flowers, animals and heart symbols. They are also a firmly integrated part of everyday working life, perhaps especially because they are understood internationally - whether via Slack, Telegram or even in emails.
However, the New York agency & Walsh has created a whole new level of communication when it comes to emojis, making specific reference to the design industry in their additional designs: "We started developing our own emojis as a whole team for fun, initially just to make our internal communication funnier. We quickly realized that others also liked them and decided to make them available for free," explains producer Gosbinda Vizarretea.
With these expanded versions and new ideas, emojis were suddenly able to capture the specific moods in creative teams and were a fun addition to daily exchanges, especially during the coronavirus lockdown when much of the company was working from home. "As we continued to work on the project during the pandemic, completely new emotions emerged that we wanted to express: Working from home, social isolation and the extremely long screen times required their own emojis ..."
During the design process, however, the team also realized how much sophistication was behind the symbols. "We thought it would be easy, simply because they are so small, but it was precisely this scale that made the design quite challenging." It was particularly difficult to adapt them to the individual applications and apps; after all, many test versions were required for every platform from iMessage to Instagram Stories. But everyone agrees that the effort was worth it...
We have long known that pictures can say more than a thousand words - especially in the visually-driven graphics industry. But the fact that emojis are also able to express a universal feeling for specific professional situations with a tiny symbol takes this art to the extreme. "Emojis are a language of their own and we are very happy to have added new vocabulary to it," says Gosbinda Vizarretea. "From the initial idea to the concept to the design, the entire creative team was involved in bringing this project to life. The biggest reward now is that we can all use these emojis and see how much fun they make our daily communication."
You can download the emojis yourself here
