An afro comb, a goose, shaking face, and more hearts are among the emojis that could be coming to mobile phones and social media websites this year. In the run-up to World Emoji Day on Sunday, a list of potential new designs has been released online.
While some of them may not make the final cut in September, it is thought a vast majority of the candidates will be successful. Other inclusions on the Emoji 15.0 draft list alongside shaking face and pink heart are light blue heart, grey heart, donkey, jellyfish, hair pick, and a Khanda - the symbol of the Sikh faith.
The new draft designs have been released by Emojipedia, one of the voting members of the Unicode Consortium who will have the final say. Other voting members include Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook's parent company Meta.
While Emojipedia has released draft designs on how the new smiley faces will look, the actual designs will differ from platform to platform. Emojipedia says its own designs may even alter when the final list of new emojis is revealed.
Keith Broni, Emojipedia’s editor-in-chief, said: "This is our eighth year of providing sample emoji designs ahead of their official arrival on emoji keyboards. Actual vendor designs will vary from those released by major vendors.
"Additionally, as this is only a draft emoji list, each emoji is subject to change prior to final approval in September 2022. However, it is worth noting the majority of draft emoji candidates have ended up included on the final list over the last number of years - including every emoji we previewed from last year's Emoji 14.0 draft list ahead of World Emoji Day 2021."
The draft designs were created by Joshua Jones, the head of emoji design at Emojipedia. The humble emoji was first introduced to mobile phones in 1997 but took off in popularity in the 2010s - in 2015, the face with tears of joy emoji was even picked as Oxford Dictionary's word of the year.
