I want to keep this comment objective but I already know I’m going to fail. I know there are real humans behind this and I know i’m supposed to be sensitive to their feelings. But I can not believe an artist could look at the new emoji set and say “Yes, yes these are better than the old ones!” I have not met any artist in my real life who can say this this, so pardon me if I get mean. I feel like I can only be speaking to some corporate entity at google who dictated these changes with no regard for actual legibility and design.

This article reads like something written after the fact to justify poor design. Just saying they read better because of the changes you made doesn’t actually make it so. I’m not even sure where to begin, how about the new rabbit face and rabbit full body emoticon? Many people have commented on how it looks like it has bloody fangs because you added the unnecessary buck tooth. When used as a tiny emoji, what will stand out will be the hot red sides that look like fangs while the teeth recede into it’s chin. How is that more legible? Further more, you’ve shortened their ears and given them the body of a human in a rabbit suit. You’ve made it actively less recognizable as a symbol of a rabbit.

Literally how is adding unnecessary cluttering via gradients more readable at all really? What information does a gradient impart when used on those animals? For any emoji that isn’t a sick one? Nothing. For pete’s sake, look at those chicks, look a that chick cracking out of that egg??? What made those examples (the ant, web and spider) readable on different backgrounds was a simple stroke, not the gradient. And even then you are ruining the emojis for EXTREME use cases. Look at Twitter, their emojis are lineless, solid shapes much like your old ones and they’ve integrated them perfectly with photo overlay. In fact, their solid shapes make them standout even more over photos, while yours will now blend into a busy mess. Twitter used to be second best to your emojis, now they have to take the mantle as the last bastion of good emoji design.

Frankly your emoji set now reads as trying to look like apple but failing. They try to integrate shading, but are executed so poorly they only come off as bootlegs of apple emojis. They used to be the best, they used to actually exemplify a real understanding of “kawaii” or cuteness that western designers could never quite get the hang of. They understood facial proportions, they understood charm and appeal. They knew what they were doing. When you did was take expert level graphics and brought them to intern level. Maybe you shouldn’t make it so “any illustrator can draw them” now and instead train or hire illustrators who could execute at the same higher level.

Even just using the examples you’ve provided yourself, look how inconsistent you are with eyes! Why do some animals have pure black eyes with no mouths (this creates a soulless funko pop look, by the way), and others have eye whites (frog, dolphin)? You could make up a reason right now and say oh its because the white provides more contrast. But you would be wrong because you also put eye whites on the chicks which are yellow. Further more the eye whites are utilized differently, in the chicks (And lizard) the pupils are placed along the edge making them look like they are sarcastic or looking in a direction for no reason. Which then brings me to the other point of why some animals have winky or happy faces while others have soulless blank faces? Why is the elephant happy? Why is the frog smiling? Why is the pig dead inside? Why is the gorilla sad? How does this again, achieve your goal of uniformity and legibility? how does making your chickens, dolphins and all animals with eye whites equa-distant to their pupil make them more recognizable and not just shell shocked?

So did you actually standardize all these designs or did you farm out the work to 10 different interns with a set of copy paste face parts and a 2 hour power point presentation? I don’t know. I will probably never know and I have probably hurt someone’s feelings but I don’t know what else to say. I was thinking these were probably just beta emojis, that they will improve next update, but seeing how proud and how EAGER you are to expound upon how amazing your design path was crushes that hope. I don’t know. I’m just a long time user of google hangouts. Always sad that the stickers were so westernized and.. not cute, generic and bleh, but happy that at least the emojis from google were fantastic. Now i see the stickers were a sign of what was to finally come to be and I can not mourn enough.

RIP the best emojis on the market. Emojis are cancelled.