Skin color Emoji coming

[Ralf Herrmann]

Encoding meets politics—looks like it’s already implemented and the next versions of Mac OS X and OS X will use unrealistic yellow skin colors as default and then 5 skin tone versions per character. 

What do you think about it?

I already wrote about it here and here is the Unicode proposal. 

[Riccardo Sartori]

The only upside I can see in this is that it highlights the advantages of Microsoft’s approach to multicolour fonts, thus there’s a slight chance it can be more widely adopted.

EDIT: that said, to add some humour, yellow stylised faces will always remind me of Lego minifigures.

Also, can I have a little green man instead of the grey one?

Edited February 27, 2015 by Riccardo Sartori

[Ralf Herrmann]

On 26 February 2015 at 1:49 PM, Riccardo Sartori said:

… yellow stylised faces will always remind me of Lego minifigures.

Or the Simpsons. 

But even there, the yellow color isn’t meant as “no human skin color”, but clearly represents what we consider “white” skin in the real world. 

 

[Riccardo Sartori]

I’m sorry for the possibly off-topic digression. 

On 27 February 2015 at 10:49 AM, Ralf Herrmann said:

there, the yellow color isn’t meant as “no human skin color”, but clearly represents what we consider “white” skin in the real world.

That sounds true regarding The Simpsons (and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, for Lego* too), but in that particular case it was a deliberate choice.

There are other elements, visual and historical, to consider regarding why yellow has been used as “skin” colour** for non-human-but-anthropomorfised characters.

For example, maximum visibility through colour contrast:

 * Compare with this: 

Long-established historical precedents:

  and also Kolobok!

* A factor to also take into consideration, most notably in Lego’s and Pac-Man’s cases, is technical limitations in faithful colour reproduction, which also applies to low-cost printing (which is why old comics’ characters have yellow shoes instead of brown ones).

** Of course, it could be argued that, in any case, yellow is a light skin colour. 

 

 

[Ralf Herrmann]

Current state in in the iOS beta. http://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/25/ios-8-3-beta-4-emoji-changes/

So a yellow skin is supposed to mean “no specific skin color”, and this golden (isn’t it blond?) hair also means “no specific hair color”‽ That’s exactly this kind of pandora’s box I warned about … 

Well, at least there are now lots of emoji to show “scary alien creatures from a nightmare”.  

[Riccardo Sartori]

I notice a severe lack of redheads...

[Riccardo Sartori]

On 24 March 2015 at 2:14 PM, Ralf Herrmann said:

at least there are now lots of emoji to show “scary alien creatures from a nightmare”.  

[Ralf Herrmann]

By the way: Here are more emoji suggested for Unicode 8, scheduled for june 2015:
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Emoji_Candidates

The cultural/political struggle is apparent there as well. Some types of food are added (e.g. hot dog, taco), but how can that ever be representative for the world? “Symbols of Religious Significance” are suggested. But who decides which religion or religious symbol is worthy for Unicode? 

[Riccardo Sartori]

About digital skin colours:

https://thenib.com/lighten-up-4f7f96ca8a7e

[Riccardo Sartori]

The cultural/political struggle is apparent there as well. Some types of food are added (e.g. hot dog, taco), but how can that ever be representative for the world? “Symbols of Religious Significance” are suggested. But who decides which religion or religious symbol is worthy for Unicode? 

​As I see it, the major struggle for Unicode is between a codification of the actual existing glyphs, and their rationalisation, the latter historically leading to all sort of problems, from apostrophes to small caps, to dingbats, etc.

That said, I never thought bringing emojis to Unicode was a good idea (while I’m still waiting for a proper encoding of Genji-mon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genji_chapter_symbols_groupings_of_5_elements.svg )

To add a last thought on skin colours, just add a colour wheel already! 

Or license the bulk of Pantone swatches and make art: http://humanae.tumblr.com

 

Edited April 5, 2015 by Riccardo Sartori

[Ralf Herrmann]

Yeah, I guess they could have also used a Jackson skin color scale. 

 

[Ralf Herrmann]

Microsoft will go with grey as neutral skin color:
http://blog.emojipedia.org/windows-10-emoji-changelog

[Ralf Herrmann]

And Unicode 9 Emoji are also already proposed, including more political correctness inclusions like “mother christmas”.

 

 

[Riccardo Sartori]

On 22 May 2015 at 6:47 PM, Ralf Herrmann said:

And Unicode 9 Emoji are also already proposed, including more political correctness inclusions like “mother christmas”.

And a Prince!

 *

Would this mean we will have the Symbol in Unicode 10?

* As I already noted, with all the striving at political correctness, female and male characters are still distinguished by their stereotypically pink/red or (light) blue coloured clothing (see also above).

[Ralf Herrmann]

As I already noted, with all the striving at political correctness, female and male characters are still distinguished by their stereotypically pink/red or (light) blue coloured clothing (see also above​).

​Which isn’t surprising and shows why these “political correctness corrections” just wont work. Symbols are meant to be, well symbols. A simple (→ simplified), recognizable representation of objects or living things. For that to work, they must be (stereo-)typical in order to work. Take everything that is stereotypical away from the symbols for man and woman for example and you won’t be able to draw them at all or they won’t be recognizable at all. 

[Ralf Herrmann]

“The candidate list for Unicode 9 is taking shape, with the final list of new emojis scheduled for approval in mid-2016.”

http://blog.emojipedia.org/unicode-9-emoji-updates

[Riccardo Sartori]

“The candidate list for Unicode 9 is taking shape, with the final list of new emojis scheduled for approval in mid-2016.”

Code name: The North-American Takeover 

[Ralf Herrmann]

Official Unicode page for Emoji candidates:
http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-candidates.html

[Ralf Herrmann]

Now that Pandora’s box is open:
New Unicode proposal for additional variations like gender and hair color …
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr52/tr52-1.html

[Ralf Herrmann]

Colbert talks about the Emoji selection process: 

 

[Riccardo Sartori]

Just to add some context, the quotes shown in the video are from this Time article.

[Ralf Herrmann]

On 10 May 2015 at 3:10 PM, Ralf Herrmann said:

Microsoft will go with grey as neutral skin color:
http://blog.emojipedia.org/windows-10-emoji-changelog

… and now they are changing it again. Redrawn Emoji with yellow as default color and a thick black outline.

http://blog.emojipedia.org/ninja-cat-the-windows-only-emoji/

[Riccardo Sartori]

On 29/2/2016 at 8:05 AM, Ralf Herrmann said:

New Unicode proposal for additional variations like gender and hair color

And at least one actually useful:* direction (even if I think a 4, or even 8 point implementation would have been better).

2 hours ago, Ralf Herrmann said:

and a thick black outline

Which make them better suitable for less-than-full-color enviroments. I like it ☺, ☞ they look more typographic. ☜

* I remember a discussion here on Typography.Guru, regarding emoji direction, but cannot find it again.

[Ralf Herrmann]

3 minutes ago, Riccardo Sartori said:

* I remember a discussion here on Typography.Guru, regarding emoji direction, but cannot find it again.

https://typography.guru/video/emoji-and-the-levitating-businessman-r34/

[Ralf Herrmann]

 

 

Big emoji update rolled out for the Facebook messenger: