After years of texting highlighter-yellow handshakes to our friends, multi-skin toned handshake emoji are coming to our phones in 2022.
The Unicode Consortium, which — among other things — sets the standard for how text (emojis included) appears in modern software, has strived to create more inclusive emoji in recent releases. The most current example is interracial couples as part of the new iOS 14.5 emoji. While emoji appear as tiny icons, they require a massive amount of effort from conception to completion — and the handshakes involved even more work.
Google’s blog post about how the multi-skin toned handshake emoji was years in the making is indicative of that journey. Jennifer Daniel, Google’s creative director for emoji, explained why it’s been such an arduous process. Read more…
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