The Unicode Consortium has a 38-strong list of potential 2016 emoji inclusions, with the likes of ‘fingers crossed’, ‘pregnant lady’ and ‘bacon’ on the shortlist.
Last June the consortium – which decides on what emojis are allowed – released Unicode 8, with a similar number of new inclusions, however, the list still lacked crucial graphics like croissants, foxes and scooters (both manual and motor).
Alas, that dearth of relevant emoji may soon come to an end, with Emojipedia reporting the full list of potential inclusions for Unicode 9 next year.
Miscellaneous items like a scooter, motor scooter, an octagonal sign, a wilted flower and a black heart make the shortlist, as do several new animals: fox, eagle, duck, bat, owl and shark.
If you’re feeling a little short-changed with your food options, fret no more with croissant, avocado, cucumber, bacon, potato, carrot and clinking glasses up for consideration.
New emoji mock-ups, via Emojipedia
Everyone loves a good hand gesture, with a call-me hand, a raised hand, left and right fists, handshake and fingers crossed included.
A rake load of new faces – including cowboy, clown, sick, ROFL, drooling, lying, shrug, selfie and facepalm – could be included, along with a male dancer, a prince, a man in a tuxedo and Mother Christmas
The evolution of emojis has sped up in the last year or so. Back in February companies like Apple included a raft of racially diverse emojis. These, however, lacked ginger alternatives, something Swyft fixed during the summer – although these are more like stickers than emoji.
Swyft’s ginger emoji range
An interesting project from a UK company looked at using emoji stories for passwords, which had an awful lot of logic going for it.
Intelligence Environments claims that this is, in fact, more secure than other password approaches online because there are 480 more permutations in a four-emoji password than in regular digit equivalents.
“You can use hearts, bits of fruit. You’ve got the hamburger, the smiling poo,” said Alan Brown, product development manager.
But back to Unicode 9 plans for next year.
This isn’t the final shortlist, with 15 other emoji still under consideration. These include stuffed flatbread, rhino and butterfly. This is the point where we all check our phones for a butterfly emoji that we just presumed already existed.
Main image via Wicker Paradise on Flickr
