Overview

World Emoji Day is a holiday celebrating the use of and fandom surrounding emoji.

Background

On July 17th, 2014, the first World Emoji Day was recognized, using the calendar emoji (📅), which reads "July 17," as the basis.

At least two people could be considered the founders of World Emoji Day. In 2015, Emojipedia editor and emoji historian said, "I created World Emoji Day last year – July 17, 2014. It was quite popular, but this year has blown it out of the water. There is a tweet about World Emoji Day every two seconds on Twitter as I write this, and it’s still increasing!"^[1]

Furthermore, The World Emoji Day^[3] website credits Burge. They write, "🌍 World Emoji Day was created by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge in 2014. 📙 Emojipedia is the custodian of this global holiday and responsible for this very website."

However, on July 17th, 2014, Washington Post^[2] writer Caitlin Dewey wrote about the July 17 date on the calendar emoji. In the article, she wrote, "Happy International Emoji Calendar Day (!), a holiday I just made up to celebrate the arrival of a date that we, perhaps without realizing it, find ourselves staring at all year."

Developments

In 2016, Pepsi released a series of emoji-inspired cans in celebration of World Emoji Day.^[4] Additionally, they released a series of video advertisements for the new cans (shown below, left).

On July 16th, 2016, the World Emoji Day YouTube account published "#WorldEmojiDay Anthem." The video (shown below, right) received more than 35,000 views in two years.

In 2018, Apple revealed 70 new emojis in celebration of World Emoji Day. They wrote in a press release:

"More than 70 new emoji characters are coming to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac later this year in a free software update. The new emoji designs, created based on approved characters in Unicode 11.0, include even more hair options to better represent people with red hair, grey hair and curly hair, a new emoji for bald people, and new smiley faces that bring more expression to Messages with a cold face, party face, pleading face and a face with hearts.

Search Interest

External References