[City Pages] A tech startup wants to pay Minnesota artists to create emojis

Kids were running around the Minnesota State Fair with poop emoji souvenirs like that shit was normal. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and NBA star Steph Curry are making crazy money hawking self-branded emojis. The Emoji Movie — starring legit comedic talents T. J. Miller, Ilana Glazer, and Sir Patrick Stewart, the latter of whom voices the poop emoji — hits theaters this summer.

Is everything dumb? You bet! But that doesn’t mean Minnesota artists shouldn’t cash in as the world burns.

MojiLaLa hasn’t adopted that corporate tagline (make an offer, guys), but the Silicon Valley tech startup is all in on digital emoting. Billed as the Netflix for emojis, the smartphone app is basically an emoji marketplace, one that gives creators a 50 percent cut of the profits.

For local artists and designers working in the medium of emoji, here’s the hard sell from MojiLaLa’s press release:

“For any artist in Minneapolis who has ever found themselves living from paycheck to paycheck — creating beautiful work but finding themselves without the resources to distribute and sell it — the MojiLaLa approach is a real miracle.”

Have an inspired take on shrug-y guy or laugh-crying guy?

Joining the “emoji revolution” requires no knowledge of coding. So far, more than 2,000 artists have submitted more than 17,000 emojis and stickers to MojiLaLa, whose CEO, Dana Loberg, is a former artist; the app has been downloaded more than 300,000 times.

If our website could support it, I’d punctuate this post with the perfect emoji.

Source: City Pages

Image Credit: Dan Anderson