Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share How Emojis Took Over the World (and the One Everyone Forgot) | Smartest Year Ever (May 23, 2025)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
How Emojis Took Over the World (and the One Everyone Forgot) | Smartest Year Ever (May 23, 2025)
Where did emojis come from—and which one did the entire world forget?
Today on Smartest Year Ever, Gordy breaks down the unexpected origin story of emojis, starting with a pixelated red heart in 1999 Tokyo. It’s the story of how Shigetaka Kurita and NTT Docomo created the world’s first emoji set, why they were only 12x12 pixels, and how Apple secretly introduced an emoji keyboard to the world years later.
Plus: how the Unicode Consortium helped emojis go global, why the most popular emoji ever was named Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year, and which weird, dusty icons no one uses anymore—including one you’ve probably never even seen.
This is the story of how a tiny picture character evolved into a global language.
Follow Smartest Year Ever for a daily dose of facts you'll actually want to bring up at dinner.
Sources:
Kurita, S. (1999). Emoji. NTT DOCOMO. Museum of Modern Art Collection. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/196070
Unicode Consortium. (2010). Unicode Technical Standard #51: Unicode Emoji. https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/
Oxford University Press. (2015). Word of the Year 2015: 😂. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2015/
Doofinder. (2024). What is the most used emoji? https://www.doofinder.com/en/statistics/most-used-emoji
Unicode Consortium. (2019). Emoji Frequency. https://home.unicode.org/emoji/emoji-frequency/
JOE.ie. (2018). The two least used emojis have been revealed. https://www.joe.ie/tech/least-used-emojis-648123
The Verge. (2017). How the iPhone won over Japan and gave the world emoji. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/29/15892640/iphone-anniversary-japan-success-emoji-history
Emojipedia. (n.d.). The Original iPhone Emoji Keyboard. https://blog.emojipedia.org/the-original-iphone-emoji-keyboard/
#EmojiHistory #Emojis #Unicode #EmojiFacts #ForgottenEmoji #EmojiTrivia #InternetCulture #SmartestYearEver #TechHistory #DailyFacts #DidYouKnow #DigitalLanguage #ShigetakaKurita #EmojiOrigins #EducationalContent #aerialtramwayemoji
Music thanks to Zapsplat.
View all episodes
By GordyWhere did emojis come from—and which one did the entire world forget?
Today on Smartest Year Ever, Gordy breaks down the unexpected origin story of emojis, starting with a pixelated red heart in 1999 Tokyo. It’s the story of how Shigetaka Kurita and NTT Docomo created the world’s first emoji set, why they were only 12x12 pixels, and how Apple secretly introduced an emoji keyboard to the world years later.
Plus: how the Unicode Consortium helped emojis go global, why the most popular emoji ever was named Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year, and which weird, dusty icons no one uses anymore—including one you’ve probably never even seen.
This is the story of how a tiny picture character evolved into a global language.
Follow Smartest Year Ever for a daily dose of facts you'll actually want to bring up at dinner.
Sources:
Kurita, S. (1999). Emoji. NTT DOCOMO. Museum of Modern Art Collection. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/196070
Unicode Consortium. (2010). Unicode Technical Standard #51: Unicode Emoji. https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/
Oxford University Press. (2015). Word of the Year 2015: 😂. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2015/
Doofinder. (2024). What is the most used emoji? https://www.doofinder.com/en/statistics/most-used-emoji
Unicode Consortium. (2019). Emoji Frequency. https://home.unicode.org/emoji/emoji-frequency/
JOE.ie. (2018). The two least used emojis have been revealed. https://www.joe.ie/tech/least-used-emojis-648123
The Verge. (2017). How the iPhone won over Japan and gave the world emoji. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/29/15892640/iphone-anniversary-japan-success-emoji-history
Emojipedia. (n.d.). The Original iPhone Emoji Keyboard. https://blog.emojipedia.org/the-original-iphone-emoji-keyboard/
#EmojiHistory #Emojis #Unicode #EmojiFacts #ForgottenEmoji #EmojiTrivia #InternetCulture #SmartestYearEver #TechHistory #DailyFacts #DidYouKnow #DigitalLanguage #ShigetakaKurita #EmojiOrigins #EducationalContent #aerialtramwayemoji
Music thanks to Zapsplat.