A Brief History of Emojis, Emoticons and ASCII Art
Before the days where you could get a 💩 or 😿 in just a few taps, users had to make their own using any symbols they could get their hands on.
Then, in the mid-90s, a Japanese mobile software developer noticed teenagers using MMS to do things that emojis would suit, and created the first round of what we’d consider emojis today.
Now, there’s an explosion of emojis. Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, Android, and others — all putting their spin on the tiny images we rely on for self-expression.
In this article, I’m going to run through the history of emojis. From their beautiful, creative beginnings as ASCII art and emoticons to the more recent innovations.
ASCII art: 1867 — Present
With historical narratives, it only makes sense to start at the first logical place. For emojis, that’s emoticons and ASCII art.
Nowadays, our emojis are formalized in 1,851 forms. Back in the pre-emoji age, ASCII art and emoticons allowed for infinite combinations.
You’ll have noticed ASCII art if you ever played text-based games, or perused software README files.
It’s a fantastic example of typographical awareness, perhaps more than it ever was or has been since. Every character needed to be pixel perfect because it was painting a bigger picture. If you don’t get what I mean, here are a couple of examples:
The images above are two examples not of ASCII art as it’s now known, but of typewriter art. ASCII art came much later, and gave text-based systems a way of displaying representations of images.
ASCII is a set of characters defined in 1963 that consists of 128 characters — 95 of which are printable. That’s the alphabet, numbers and punctuation.
Armed with this small toolset, ASCII artists created stunning work that can been in its natural environment in terminal applications, README files and games.
ASCII art examples:
For quick reference, here are a few golden-era ASCII art examples. More here!
0verkill
0verkill is coded entirely in ASCII art. A 2D deathmatch game created to side-step the limited graphical capabilities of Linux at the time.
And take a look at the website for the other half of the relic.
MUD Dragon — John Barger
A typical example of art designed for Multi-User Dungeons, WoW’s predecessors that were entirely text-based and accessed via Telnet.
… And the bonus of a charming description.
Hexonyx — MUD art in its natural environment
Hexonyx is a MUD game that’s still being maintained 2 decades after inception. It has a small, active community of 10–20 players total, and I’m one of the newer ones.
Amiga ASCII art from 1987
ASCII art logo for the German BBS “Ice Cream”.
This comparison image shows the display discrepancies between two different systems.
Emoticons: 1881 — Present Day
It would be no good to say that emoticons have been popular since 1881 (my mum’s only just got the hang of them) but they have been around since then. 1881’s March 30 edition of humor magazine Puck featured this set:
However, emoticons have only really been in widespread use since the BBS era of the ‘80s.
Scott Fahlman, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, suggested emoticons be used on their internal BBS because a joke about a mercury spill was mistaken for a serious incident. Hoping to stop it happening again, he posted this now-legendary entry to the group:
I propose that [sic] the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:
:-(
And so, this ‘character sequence’ went on to be used first by members of the university, then the world.
My personal favorite variety of ASCII emoticons are the wide variety of cats popular in Japan.
But I did regularly refer to a true product of the early 2000s — a physical book that showed you how to create different emoticons in text messages, from Marge Simpson to a rose.
“Over 1,250 abbreviations, emoticons and their meanings guarantee you irresistible pick-up lines, witty replies, short, sharp rows, faultless plans and scorching romantic exchanges, as well as creative ways with pictures for idle moments.” — Wan2tlk?: Ltle Bk of Txt Msgs
Very sad I don’t own that book any more. If I did, I would have offered you to leave your number so I can send you I have just made a very lewd remark ;->
Emoji: 1998 — Present Day
TIL: Emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, “picture”) + moji (文字, “character”). AND, the fact that it’s anything similar to emoticon is a coincidence. It’s probably not a coincidence that the name took off in the Western world though, thanks to the similarity.
The first emojis — i-mode era
Emojis were created by Shigetaka Kurita working at i-mode — a Japanese mobile internet provider that ran on your classic clamshell Motorola type phones in the 2000s.
After Kurita realized the popularity of MMS and emoticons, he developed the first round of emojis.
Of particular note are the examples above that you can see in their almost exact form today. You’ve got your ⚡, your ✨, your 😍, and even 🗻… Sadly no 💯, or 💁, though.
Unicode formalized hundreds more emojis over the next decade
Unicode — the big boss of what you’re allowed to type — picked up on the popularity of emojis and adding several hundreds more to their list over the coming decade. Some super haxx0r code fonts Webdings/Wingdings, and some ported directly over from the original Japanese set, which explains why we have stunning art like 🎑 and 🗻.
The porting-over was documented in the Unicode document EmojiSources.txt, which maps to and from the original Japanese legacy set.
Unicode emojis are translated by the provider, whether that’s Apple, Twitter, Google, etc. So when Unicode allows companies to provide new emojis, every company can have their own take on it. Again, this explains why very specific Japanese-related emojis were rolled out with Facebook’s brand new set — they wanted to make sure they’re covering all the bases.
Apple popularized emoji use…
In 2010, emoji usage hit an all time high thanks to Apple’s iPhone emoji support. The emojis we recognize that are used around the web are usually the Apple emojis. Cheers, Steve Jobs!
…Then the world went crazy
After Apple smashed into the market, we saw emojis being spun off by a ton of companies, like:
- Apple
- Microsoft
- Samsung
- HTC
- Mozilla
- Emoji One
- emojidex
Each of these companies have the whole set of emojis listed, each with their own design. The parallels are pretty interesting. One of my favorites is the Apple Mount Fuji vs. the Facebook Mount Fuji:
Face with Tears of Joy is a word right now
In 2015, Face with Tears of Joy (😂) became OED’s word of the year. It’s the most used emoji of all time, probably because it’s the only one that properly conveys laughter, other than Cat Face with Tears of Joy, which is a personal fave. 😹
And, of course, you’ve got your aubergines as penises 🍆 and your maple leaves as pot 🍁.
…And your iA Emoji Translator that helps you construct you pure emoji passages of text by typing normal English words.
With Facebook’s new set of emojis, I’m looking forward to whatever updates we’re going to see in the future.
👋 Thanks for reading! 💚
Originally published at benjbrandall.com.
