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> But as there are a lot of people in the world who have different skin color, there is a need for multiple different skin colored emojis. Why? The way I look
by Blikkentrekker 5y ago
> But as there are a lot of people in the world who have different skin color, there is a need for multiple different skin colored emojis.
Why? The way I look at this graphic: they are schematic cartoon repræsentation of nail-less, hairless hands that are quite minimal, and originally were in a shade of amber that no human skin would ever have.
These are clearly abstractions; human hands have a variety of variations to them:
- finger length
- finger thickness
- nail length
- amount of hair
- visibility of tendons
- missing fingers
- extra fingers
- perhaps partially missing fingers
I do not see why such would need to be reflected in a schematic abstraction.
Personally, I have long, thin fingers, relatively long nails that are painted black, relative hairlnessness, very visible tendons, and a copper-ish skin color that is not well reflected in all the skin color options.
I cannot say I see a particular reason to select something that can approximate the look of my own hands for this, nor can such feasibly be done with the sheer amount of individual variance.
> With handshake being one of the few without a way to customize the skin color it makes sens that it is worked on.
I agree that excluding handshakes is inconsistent. I simply find it odd to say there is a need whatsoever to allow or skin color customization, and only limit it to what seems to be a linear progression from latte to chestnut, which does not even capture all common tones of human skin, and why would one stop there? If one is going to allow color customization, it seems better to have a mechanism to actually select r.g.b.a. color values.
The linear gradient between two polar extremes seems to suggest if anything that it was motivated by a U.S.A. “race” based incentive, that is known to often reason as though what they call “black” and “white” are the only two “races” on the planet.
It seems an odd priority with an odd implementation.
- watwut 5y agoBecause some people are really really big on personalization, aesthetics and customization. Some people spend hours tweaking how their characters in games look like. Some people are willing to pay just so they can customize character details. And while I almost never use emoji, some people use them a lot.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoThat in no way answers why options of skin tone on a linear scale between latte and chestnut were chosen as the only particular option, which do not even cover all common human skin tones. As I said, if skin tones should be customization, then simply allow for an a.r.g.b value of some sorts.
- watwut 5y agoPicking a.r.g.b value is nothing but simple. More of "time consuming and annoying".
- galgalesh 5y agoThe skin tones were based on the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for determining skin color. ARGB Skin tones are technically difficult to implement in unicode and would explode the amount of work needed by emoji font designers. It's always a trade-off between enabling expression and keeping it practical.
- pbronez 5y agoThat's really interesting! It's nice to know that the tones were chosen from an established dermatological scale that was created to help people keep their skin healthy. That's about as wholesome and rigorous as you could hope for, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale
- steerablesafe 5y agoHmm, 'a', so we don't leave out ghosts.
- retox 5y agoIt's a useful shortcut to mentally label people as not serious and worthy of no attention.
- twobitshifter 5y agoOn top of this if you were to examine the palms of the people around you, you’d see that they’re all lightly colored, so this whole thing is not even representing skin color correctly for the 2nd hand.
- pbronez 5y agoThat's a great point. This seems like something to handle at the font design level though. Once the Unicode Consortium defines the code points and their interpretation, each platform / font designer gets to choose what that symbol will actually look like on their platform. I'm sure we'll see a lot of variety on the new hand and handshake emoji.