Before I started my assignment I drafted what I wanted to create mentally, I had a lot of random emoji’s I could’ve made but I kept them at the back of my head. As I listened to the podcast the importance of emojis dawned on me, hearing the experience of the young girl that petitioned for a hijab emoji really made me realize that there’s kind of something bigger behind emoji and their representation. Personally I couldn’t care less for emoji’s as I practically never use them unless I was using them ironically or if the emoji was considered a meme.

Going off of that, having to choose what emoji’s could represent me or my culture I was a little conflicted because although I’m Emirati I still consider the internet to be a big part of who I am. So I chose to dedicate one of my 3 emoji’s to the internet. I basically made an Arabic version of the ?️ emoji as the emoji is considered to be a meme. As for my other two emoji’s I chose to go for a Lugaimat emoji and a Red Chai emoji.

• 

• 

• 

Part of being an Arab and an Emirati is the excess consumption of red chai, paired with the Lugaimat emoji it represents the hospitality of Arabs. Initially I checked to see if there was an emoji for tea, and there was tea/coffee in a mug and also Japanese matcha. Referring back to the 99% Invisible podcast and the importance of representation especially in something as simple as emoji’s, I realized that there’s a lack of representation for things that are “Arab”, a simple example being tea. One could argue that the tea mug emoji represents tea already but that would ignore the cultures where tea is only consumed in small glasses. That glass in itself is a form of representation that could be overlooked, much like the farmer with the pitchfork emoji.

Moving forward :

What irked me about this assignment was knowing that the format of our “emoji’s” automatically makes them not emoji’s, as they are images/pictures that are a file and not part of a text. So if I were to send a message without the context of “this is what a chai emoji would look like” , then it looks like I just sent an illustration. With that being said, I ended up having to give context to most of my recipients which to me did not flow naturally.

As for the reactions that I got they were pretty much what I expected, mainly because they’re just emoji and no one really “reacts” to emoji’s. Below are screenshots of some of the conversations I had, My favorite emoji was the Arabic “B” because it looked the most like an emoji in terms of design and it made a couple of my friends laugh. As for the Lugaimat emoji, it pretty much looks like a round candied apple and without the context of the assignment people probably would not have been able to figure it out. One of my goals when I made these emoji’s was to maintain the emoji aesthetic so it feels more like one. I think that the Chai emoji looked the most like an emoji in terms of design and could probably pass as one if it was used in a text and not as an image. One of the reactions I got for the Chai emoji ties back to the 99%  podcast and representation, seeing someone who has not been to family gatherings remember how much they miss drinking tea with their family just shows how something as simple as tea is deeper than what we take at face value, much like emoji.

• 

• 

• 

• 

•