4 ms·

I'm just happy the blob designs are back for it -- I always preferred those over the now-industry-standard "realistic" emoji designs that Apple likes.

Avamander 4y ago
I wish they had just fixed the inconsistencies in the original blobmoji font instead of scrapping them alltogether.
ruined 4y ago
>realistic assume a human is a frictonless sphere. given the skin color "default", solve for emotion rolling_on_the_floor_laughing
bscphil 4y ago
> "realistic" I guess you mean skeuomorphic, with heightened 3D presence caused by heavy use of light and shadow - roughly, the sort of effect you would get from a static rendering of a cheap 3D model in a Unity mobile game. I agree with you, although I will say that the current version of the Noto Color Emoji font is (IMO) the best up-to-date color emoji, because it mostly eschews this fake realism that feels uncomfortable and disconcerting in other emoji fonts. I'd prefer hyper-stylized "blobs", but I think they deserve some credit for avoiding the worst of skeuomorphic design. See for example the "realistic" 3D rendering of the hand on the Apple emoji for "thinking face", it's firmly in uncanny valley for me. [1] The Noto emojis remain fairly stylized without being hideous like the Microsoft emojis. Google also deserves from credit for drastically improving the rendering of many of these emojis over time. This has happened quietly enough that I doubt most people have noticed. They brought back the more blob-like turtle [2], which really deserves to be compared to the horrible, awkward plastic children's toy that is the Apple rendering. Or take a look at how awful the gradients are on the Android 8-10 emoji [3] and compare to more recent versions. [4] I think we will look back at awkward 3D renderings in many emoji styles as a mistake. They remind me quite a bit of the terrible DreamWorks animation style [5] of the early '00s. [1] https://emojipedia.org/thinking-face/ https://emojipedia.org/thinking-face/ [2] https://emojipedia.org/turtle/ https://emojipedia.org/turtle/ [3] https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0/ https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0/ [4] https://emojipedia.org/google/android-11.0/ https://emojipedia.org/google/android-11.0/ [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tale
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  I'm surprised that Apple hasn't updated their skeuomorphic emojis. They didn't look good even at the very beginning, and surely doesn't match Apple's design language/principle for.. at least 5 years. Apple is supposed to be the company that is obsessed with aesthetics yet they never update/redo the emojis.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    Apple's emojis are fine. What's not fine is their treatment of them: apps can be rejected from the AppStore if they feature emojis on a screenshots, or have them on some button. What's worse, this rule is applied very inconsistently.
  - thiht 4y ago
    You realize not everyone thinks Apple emoji don’t look good? In particular in the younger demographic I’d be surprised if they were less liked than Android blob emojis. I mean, take GP’s comparison of the turtle, do you really think the Android ugly, and to be honest with a somewhat mentally challenged face, looks better than Apple’s turtle? Maybe you do, and maybe GP does too, but tons of people wouldn’t. I’ve never used that many emoji in my messages than since I switched to iOS because their emojis carry way more meaning to me.
    - thrdbndndn 4y ago
      Looking good is subjective, I was more saying that it doesn't match/fit with Apple's general aesthetics today. Apple dropped skeuomorphic style from their UI a long time ago.
    - ginko 4y ago
      Yes the android turtle looks way better.
- derefr 4y ago
  > I guess you mean skeuomorphic, with heightened 3D presence caused by heavy use of light and shadow No, not really; the problem is more, taking things that were originally introduced with the intention of being abstract pictograms signifying emotions; and adding enough un-called-for detail (i.e. details not required by the Unicode codepoint description) as to make things like gender and race seem like a relevant or even necessary property. Consider: in all modern implementations, "emotion" emoji are displayed with... heads. Opaque backing "vaguely skin-tinted" blobs at the very least; full-on human heads with ears and noses and hair in some fonts. They don't need to be. Nothing about the Unicode codepoint for e.g. U+1F603 "grinning face with big eyes" says the "face" needs to even be visualized as being on a head. It could be doing a cheshire-cat-smile thing, just eyes and a mouth — ":D" but rotated 90 degrees. And, in fact, that's exactly what it was, in the DoCoMo image-font, one of the three that led to the Unicode introduction of emoji! But for some reason, now we don't just have skeuomorphism (shiny eyes, pink mouths with tongues, blushing cheeks); we have these heads, and ears, and hair; and before you know it, people wondering why the head is yellow rather than some actual skin tone; or why the increasingly-less-generic face shape seems to be more masculine than feminine; etc. Why not just cut the Gordian knot? Get rid of the "head" part. Get rid of any part that's not required to communicate the concept. Make an image-font of only the Minimum Viable Pictograms for what each of the Unicode codepoint descriptions describes. Which is orthogonal to skeuomorphism, mind you. This isn't about whether a tongue has a tongue-ish texture to it. It's about whether you should include a tongue at all.
Sqwandery 4y ago
Glad I'm not the only one who loved blobmoji
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Back in the day when they were standard in Androids we received tons of complaints about our chat app from users, "why do you use these fugly blob emojis? Can't you have nice ones like on iPhones?"
- signal11 4y ago
  I guess it’s very subjective and while I’m sure the blobs had fans, they just looked weird to me. And it probably didn’t help that WhatsApp had their own emoji on Android. Note that Microsoft also had to do a refresh of all their emoji for Windows 11. For now the Apple/WhatsApp like aesthetic is king. But it’s so fashion driven, you never know what’ll be in tomorrow.
  - endless1234 4y ago
    > And it probably didn’t help that WhatsApp had their own emoji on Android. Whatsapp just used Apple's emoji font on android too, for a long time. Eventually they drew their own, often mirrored, versions in the same style.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      Telegram also used Apple's emoji, and what's unclear to me how they got away with it: I did search hard and could not find any information on Apple Emoji licensing or whether they can be used on other platforms at all.
endemic 4y ago
Eevee wrote about the industry mimicking Apple, and the downsides of that. It’s a great read if you haven’t seen it. https://eev.ee/blog/2016/04/12/apple-did-not-invent-emoji/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/04/12/apple-did-not-invent-emoji/

Avamander 4y ago

I wish they had just fixed the inconsistencies in the original blobmoji font instead of scrapping them alltogether.

ruined 4y ago

>realistic assume a human is a frictonless sphere. given the skin color "default", solve for emotion rolling_on_the_floor_laughing

bscphil 4y ago

> "realistic" I guess you mean skeuomorphic, with heightened 3D presence caused by heavy use of light and shadow - roughly, the sort of effect you would get from a static rendering of a cheap 3D model in a Unity mobile game. I agree with you, although I will say that the current version of the Noto Color Emoji font is (IMO) the best up-to-date color emoji, because it mostly eschews this fake realism that feels uncomfortable and disconcerting in other emoji fonts. I'd prefer hyper-stylized "blobs", but I think they deserve some credit for avoiding the worst of skeuomorphic design. See for example the "realistic" 3D rendering of the hand on the Apple emoji for "thinking face", it's firmly in uncanny valley for me. [1] The Noto emojis remain fairly stylized without being hideous like the Microsoft emojis. Google also deserves from credit for drastically improving the rendering of many of these emojis over time. This has happened quietly enough that I doubt most people have noticed. They brought back the more blob-like turtle [2], which really deserves to be compared to the horrible, awkward plastic children's toy that is the Apple rendering. Or take a look at how awful the gradients are on the Android 8-10 emoji [3] and compare to more recent versions. [4] I think we will look back at awkward 3D renderings in many emoji styles as a mistake. They remind me quite a bit of the terrible DreamWorks animation style [5] of the early '00s. [1] https://emojipedia.org/thinking-face/ https://emojipedia.org/thinking-face/ [2] https://emojipedia.org/turtle/ https://emojipedia.org/turtle/ [3] https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0/ https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0/ [4] https://emojipedia.org/google/android-11.0/ https://emojipedia.org/google/android-11.0/ [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tale

thrdbndndn 4y ago
I'm surprised that Apple hasn't updated their skeuomorphic emojis. They didn't look good even at the very beginning, and surely doesn't match Apple's design language/principle for.. at least 5 years. Apple is supposed to be the company that is obsessed with aesthetics yet they never update/redo the emojis.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Apple's emojis are fine. What's not fine is their treatment of them: apps can be rejected from the AppStore if they feature emojis on a screenshots, or have them on some button. What's worse, this rule is applied very inconsistently.
- thiht 4y ago
  You realize not everyone thinks Apple emoji don’t look good? In particular in the younger demographic I’d be surprised if they were less liked than Android blob emojis. I mean, take GP’s comparison of the turtle, do you really think the Android ugly, and to be honest with a somewhat mentally challenged face, looks better than Apple’s turtle? Maybe you do, and maybe GP does too, but tons of people wouldn’t. I’ve never used that many emoji in my messages than since I switched to iOS because their emojis carry way more meaning to me.
  - thrdbndndn 4y ago
    Looking good is subjective, I was more saying that it doesn't match/fit with Apple's general aesthetics today. Apple dropped skeuomorphic style from their UI a long time ago.
  - ginko 4y ago
    Yes the android turtle looks way better.
derefr 4y ago
> I guess you mean skeuomorphic, with heightened 3D presence caused by heavy use of light and shadow No, not really; the problem is more, taking things that were originally introduced with the intention of being abstract pictograms signifying emotions; and adding enough un-called-for detail (i.e. details not required by the Unicode codepoint description) as to make things like gender and race seem like a relevant or even necessary property. Consider: in all modern implementations, "emotion" emoji are displayed with... heads. Opaque backing "vaguely skin-tinted" blobs at the very least; full-on human heads with ears and noses and hair in some fonts. They don't need to be. Nothing about the Unicode codepoint for e.g. U+1F603 "grinning face with big eyes" says the "face" needs to even be visualized as being on a head. It could be doing a cheshire-cat-smile thing, just eyes and a mouth — ":D" but rotated 90 degrees. And, in fact, that's exactly what it was, in the DoCoMo image-font, one of the three that led to the Unicode introduction of emoji! But for some reason, now we don't just have skeuomorphism (shiny eyes, pink mouths with tongues, blushing cheeks); we have these heads, and ears, and hair; and before you know it, people wondering why the head is yellow rather than some actual skin tone; or why the increasingly-less-generic face shape seems to be more masculine than feminine; etc. Why not just cut the Gordian knot? Get rid of the "head" part. Get rid of any part that's not required to communicate the concept. Make an image-font of only the Minimum Viable Pictograms for what each of the Unicode codepoint descriptions describes. Which is orthogonal to skeuomorphism, mind you. This isn't about whether a tongue has a tongue-ish texture to it. It's about whether you should include a tongue at all.

Sqwandery 4y ago

Glad I'm not the only one who loved blobmoji

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

Back in the day when they were standard in Androids we received tons of complaints about our chat app from users, "why do you use these fugly blob emojis? Can't you have nice ones like on iPhones?"

signal11 4y ago
I guess it’s very subjective and while I’m sure the blobs had fans, they just looked weird to me. And it probably didn’t help that WhatsApp had their own emoji on Android. Note that Microsoft also had to do a refresh of all their emoji for Windows 11. For now the Apple/WhatsApp like aesthetic is king. But it’s so fashion driven, you never know what’ll be in tomorrow.
- endless1234 4y ago
  > And it probably didn’t help that WhatsApp had their own emoji on Android. Whatsapp just used Apple's emoji font on android too, for a long time. Eventually they drew their own, often mirrored, versions in the same style.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    Telegram also used Apple's emoji, and what's unclear to me how they got away with it: I did search hard and could not find any information on Apple Emoji licensing or whether they can be used on other platforms at all.

endemic 4y ago

Eevee wrote about the industry mimicking Apple, and the downsides of that. It’s a great read if you haven’t seen it. https://eev.ee/blog/2016/04/12/apple-did-not-invent-emoji/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/04/12/apple-did-not-invent-emoji/