Did anyone catch Damon Darlin’s article, “America Needs Its Own Emojis,” in the New York Times Sunday Review section? As he reminds us, emojis originated in Japan, so they don’t cover all of America’s emoji needs:
“Indeed, the Japanese vocabulary is most notable for what it fails to offer Americans. For example, there is no middle-finger hand signal. Or the good-luck signal of fingers crossed. No Vulcan salute to live long and prosper, which would have been much appreciated following the recent death of Leonard Nimoy, who played a Vulcan on ‘Star Trek.'”
I liked that paragraph because, in 2013, when I started making emoji stud earrings, two that I did right away were the middle finger …
Sterling silver. $35 for a single. Click to shop.
… and the Vulcan “Live Long and Prosper” salute.
Sterling silver. $35 for a single. Click to shop.
It took me a couple more months to do the crossed fingers, but it was still pretty early in my emoji career!
Sterling silver. $35 for a single. Click to shop.
The middle finger was inspired by Eminem’s favorite gesture, but I modeled one of my newest “should be an emoji” creations on another rapper. Tupac Shakur liked to throw up the Westside gang sign …
Click to hear Tupac’s “Last One Left.”
… inspiring vast numbers of uncool white people to do the same.
Well, I was standing by a giant W. What was I supposed to do?!
Here’s a sneak peek of my Westside emoji stud.
Sterling silver. $35 for a single. Email me at info at wendybrandes dot com.
It’s not on my website yet, but you can email me at info at wendybrandes dot com to order.
The Eastside sign never had as much cachet as the Westside sign, but I made an earring for it in the interest of balance.
Sterling silver. $35 for a single. Email to purchase.
The New York Times story says, “Apple is expected to release a revised set of emojis for the iPhone and iPad in the spring.” Is that this spring? I thought we were getting new emojis last summer. Last thing I heard about that was from New York Magazine, which reported in November that the Unicode Consortium, which creates emojis, encoded the designs last year as promised, but Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., had yet to add the new emojis to their operating systems. At the time, Apple declined to comment on when the emojis might go live. One thing I do know is that the newest batch won’t include any gang signs!