The Unicode Consortium Launches New Website in Celebration of World Emoji Day

/The New Unicode.org Also Offers Emoji Enthusiasts the Chance to “Adopt
a Character”/

The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that maintains text standards to
support all the world’s written languages across every device, today
debuted a new look for unicode.org <http://www.unicode.org/>. The
redesigned website will make information about the emoji proposal
process more easily accessible while encouraging public participation
and engagement in all Unicode initiatives.

“Unicode is a global technology standard that is one of the core
building blocks of the internet,” said Unicode board member Greg Welch.
“Unicode has helped facilitate the work of programmers and linguists
from around the world since the 1990s. But with the rise of mobile
devices and public enthusiasm for emoji, we knew it was time to redesign
the Unicode website to make information more easily accessible, and
increase community involvement.”

Emoji were adopted into the Unicode Standard in 2010 in a move that made
the characters available everywhere. Today, emoji have been used
<https://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2016/11/21/report-emoji-used-by-92-of-worlds-online-population.html#gs.k0ggca>
by 92% of the world’s online population. And while emoji encoding and
standardization make up just one small part of the Consortium’s text
standards work, the growing popularity and demand for emoji have put the
organization in the international spotlight.

“We’ve been working with the Unicode Consortium for several years to
open up the emoji proposals process by making it more accessible and
understandable,” said Jennifer 8. Lee, co-founder of Emojination. “While
I personally found the late-90s aesthetic of the developer-centric
Unicode.org site very retro and nerd charming, the new site redesign is
a reflection of Unicode’s deep desire to engage the public in its work.”

In addition to offering a clearer picture of the emoji submission and
standardization process, the new Unicode.org website offers information
about the Consortium and its mission to enable people everywhere in the
world to use any language on any device.

“Emoji are just one element of our broader mission,” said Mark Davis,
president and co-founder of the Unicode Consortium. “The Consortium is a
team of largely volunteers who are dedicated to ensuring that people all
over the world can use their language of choice in digital communication
across any computer, phone or other device. From English and Chinese to
Cherokee, Hindi and Rohingya, the Consortium is committed to preserving
every language for the digital era.”

A team of designers from Adobe provided design and branding support, as
well as free access to leading design tools, to bring Unicode’s new
website to life.

“The Unicode Consortium’s work to keep digitally disadvantaged languages
alive is incredibly important,” said Adobe Design Program Manager Lisa
Pedee. “We collaborated closely with the Consortium to develop a unique
visual brand and streamlined web interface that makes everything from
contributing language data to proposing an emoji more accessible,
inclusive and user-friendly.”

The Consortium’s recent language work includes adding language data for
Cherokee, encoding the Hanifi Rohingya script, and developing the Mayan
hieroglyphic script.

The Consortium invites emoji and language enthusiasts to celebrate World
Emoji Day on July 17 and “Adopt a Character” to support its ongoing
efforts. More than 136,000 characters
<http://www.unicode.org/consortium/choosing.html> are up for adoption —
including this new Emoji 12.0
<http://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-released.html> additions such
as the sloth, the sea otter, the waffle and Saturn.

sloth image otter image waffle image ice image ringed planet image

Those who choose to adopt will receive a custom digital badge they can
display to publicly show their support, whether on their website or
social media. The Unicode Consortium is a 501(c)(3) charitable
organization and “adoption fees” are tax-deductible in the U.S.
Additionally, some companies may provide matching funds. Learn more and
adopt your character here <http://home.unicode.org/adopt-a-character/>.

*About the Unicode Consortium*
The Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit on a mission to enable anyone to
use any language across every device, globally. The Consortium develops,
extends and promotes the use of the Unicode Standard, freely-available
specifications and data that form the foundation for software
internationalization in all major operating systems, search applications
and the web.

The Unicode Consortium is open to all and comprises individuals,
companies, academic institutions and governments. Members include Adobe,
Apple, Emojipedia, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle and
SAP, among others. For more information, please visit
http://www.unicode.org <http://www.unicode.org/>.

http://blog.unicode.org/2019/07/unicode-consortium-launches-new.html

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