14 DAY TRIAL // This year's edition of Google’s I/O offered an insight into various projects that Google has been working on, including some new features that users should expect to see in Android O. One of them is redesigned emojis.
Google’s emojis have had a gumdrop blob shape since Android 4.3 and it seems that Google is finally ready to adopt the circular face emoji that’s available on multiple platforms out there. According to Fastcodesign, Google has worked on the new style of emojis for over 18 months and we must say that they indeed look better than blob emojis, which didn’t always manage to convey what users were actually trying to express.
Google actually started gradually changing emojis in Android with the release of Nougat and the introduction of female professions, a set of emojis with torsos that had the shape of real people, and not just some melted down faces. Still, the two shapes of emojis were available in a single set, which didn’t really provide fluidity when it comes to emojis on Android. In addition, Google had to follow Unicode recommendations of introducing emoji genders.
“I don’t think any of our emoji were culturally insensitive, but the things we tried to do when having conversations about representation [was to ask], ‘since these are global, how do we remove any representation of same gender, and what it means to be a woman in any culture,’” says Rachel Been, Creative Director on Google’s Material Design.
Google started working on new emojis 18 months ago
But the process of creating new emojis isn’t that simple, Google actually had to develop a new emoji logic, not just images with a new style. The new emoji style needed to be cohesive with Material Design guidelines and a grid system was used for the new emojis to get consistent expressions.
New emojis will arrive with Android O later this year, but the latest version of Android will also deliver the first full compatibility with the Emoji 5.0 standard from a major vendor. Google also intends to provide a way for smartphones and tablets running older Android versions to download the new emoji set and thus finally replace those old gumdrop blob emojis.
