Welcome to the 236th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode, we translate the history of Shigetaka Kurita, the Japanese creative who invented ‘emojis’ and birthed a new era of digitized speech.
Emojis, unlike emoticons, were invented in 1999 by artist Shigetaka Kurita. Defined as “a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in the text and used in electronic messages,” they differ from text-based ‘emoticon’ counterparts like, :-) XD :P, due to their distinctively illustrative medium. Conveying emotion through pictures, often in objects and expressions, emojis stray from keyboard characters to communicate thoughts and feelings more accurately.
During the development of emojis, Shigetaka Kurita was employed at NTT Docomo, a telecommunications company in Japan. While it’s unclear whether the idea for emojis was a collaborative or sole effort, Kurita lacked little to no skill in coding or digital creation, meaning each of the original 176 emojis was created by hand. Drawing every face and object, the artist was limited to 12x12 pixels due to technological restraints.
Creating concise and universally understood graphics while working with such minimal space proved quite the feat for Kurita, but he ultimately finished his work that same year. His team at Docomo then digitized each drawing through various processes like scanning, digital recreation, pixelation and integration, to be unveiled as a part of the company’s i-mode mobile internet platform.
Quickly adopted by users in Japan, Kurita’s invention caught wildfire and was swiftly integrated throughout the West. App developers would create a workaround so iOS users could enable third-party emojis during conversations, but by 2008, Apple’s iOS 2.2 update would officially introduce emojis to their preloaded software. Companies like Google and Microsoft followed suit, inventing their own graphics as emojis became an industry standard.
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