How were the first emoji created?

The first emoji were made in 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita, a designer on the team behind NTT DOCOMO's i-mode mobile internet platform in Japan. He drew a set of 176 pictures on a grid of 12 by 12 pixels, so that they could be sent on mobile phones and pagers as single characters. The word emoji combines the Japanese words for picture and character. [1] [2] [3]

I-mode, launched by NTT DOCOMO in 1999, gave people internet access from a cellphone. The phones had small black and white screens and strict limits on text length. Team member Yuko Sasahara has said the team wanted to put emotion and mood into a cold digital world, and to do it in the most compact way possible. Kurita has said that the 12 by 12 dot limit had to be overcome and that all 176 designs were made in a single month. [4]

Kurita also wanted an interface that conveyed information briefly, such as an icon for the weather forecast instead of the written word cloudy. MoMA's design specialist Paul Galloway adds that DOCOMO wanted a standout feature that would grab attention in Japan. [3] [5]

Kurita drew on manga, the Zapf Dingbats typeface, pictograms and emoticons, which are faces built from ordinary punctuation marks. He reused existing forms too: the cigarette shape, for example, came from a No Smoking sign. Kurita has also cited videogames as an inspiration. The BBC reports that he noticed the popularity of a teenage-oriented pager that used a heart symbol. [2] [5] [4] [6]

Galloway notes that the pager, called the Pocket Bell, had displayed what he calls the first emoji, a heart. Accounts therefore differ slightly on what counts as first, but all the sources here agree that the 1999 set was the original full collection. [5]

The set leaned toward symbols rather than faces, because DOCOMO's aim was new ways to express information. It included weather, traffic, technology items and moon phases, along with numbers and transport signs. It also had facial expressions such as smiling, crying and angry faces, plus symbols for businesses like banks and convenience stores. Galloway says the original three types were content delivery icons, menu items and communication expressions. Emotional communication is now what matters most. [3] [4] [5]

The emoji were an instant success in Japan and rival companies quickly copied them. Other countries did not follow until 2011, when Apple added emoji to iOS. The Museum of Modern Art acquired the original 176 in 2016. [5]