World Emoji Day is celebrated every year on July 17. The choice of date is rooted in emoji history itself, but the day has become a celebration of all emojis. 

Emoticons or emojis are facial or pictorial representations that accompany texts to convey messages better. With people resorting more to typing, emojis have developed into a communicative language of their own. 

History of World Emoji Day 

The first World Emoji Day was celebrated in 2014 and was introduced by Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia. 

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Significance of World Emoji Day

While this day is set aside to celebrate emojis, it has also become a day when new emoji-related product announcements and releases take place. 

History of emojis 

Emojis go all the way back in history when civilizations used pictograms to communicate, take for example Egyptian hieroglyphics. 

The modern-day emoji has come a long way from there and can be traced to the 1990s, when “:)” or “;)” were used in conversations to express a smile or wink. 

Shigetaka Kurita, however, is the father of the new emojis. Docomo, the Japanese company, released 176 of the designer’s emojis in 1999. 

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The word emoji comes from two Japanese words, meaning picture and letter, and it is a mere coincidence that emojis sound derived from the word emotion. Kurita relied on Japanese graphic novels and Zapf Dingbats typeface, along with illustrations and pictograms to create the first emoji library. These pixellated designs are available at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

The museum page says the following about emojis: “Emoji, when combined with text, allow for more nuanced intonation. Filling in for body language, they reassert the human within the deeply impersonal, abstract space of electronic communication.” 

Currently, there are over 3,000 emojis which exist with more to be added over the course of 2022.