For this week’s assignment we were asked to create three emojis from our hometown and ask for feedback from our friends and family. I took my time to draw them out and then pass them on to Illustrator in order to refresh myself on how to use the tool. Once I was done, I decided to share it in a group chat of close friends, on a one on one conversation with a friend who’s also a graphic designer, and with my parents and directly ask for their feedback. Most of the feedback was done through voice notes so it wouldn’t really make sense to post them. With all three groups, I received a similar response for each. In the following paragraphs, I’ll describe the context each emoji and give their respective reactions.
Mongarú:
Mongarú is a word in Guarani (the native language of Paraguay) that literally translates to “feed”. However, as most of the words in Guaraní, it’s social connotation is completely different. This emoji describes the action of the mongaru, which goes as follows: When someone is telling a friend of an achievement they’ve recently had, the friend would say something along the lines of “come here” and would put his hand in the shape of the top hand with an up and down motion of the wrist. This is an invitation for the person telling the story to put his hand as shown in the bottom hand in the emoji. Put together, they are supposed to create the shape of a bird feeding its babies, hence the literal term. Nevertheless, it is an official demonstration of congratulations that is demonstrated through physical action. I chose to draw this emoji because I don’t think I use any for congratulation purposes. I understand that there are a lot of celebration bells and bows, but that is not how we express congratulations in a daily context. I felt that doing it through Mongarú would go along the common use of hand gestures in emojis.
My friends however stated that these two hand gestures could be done in two separate emojis, since they are actions from a sender and a receiver. In it’s current state, the sender is already taking the action of the receiver. If they were to be split, the sender’s emoji would connote the same intentions as the live action, an invitation to come forward and send the bottom emoji. This action would have a context of connection. Nevertheless, there is a problem when taking perspective in consideration. Senders and receivers don’t share the same perspective when texting. Senders normally see their own bubble appear coming in from the right of the screen, while receivers see the senders message coming in from the left of the screen. This would distortion the perception of the images, because both wouldn’t be able to meet and create the shape. The only way to fix this change in perspective is for Unicode to automatically reflect the perception so there would be a “bird-feeding” image for both the sender and the receiver.
Un Tere:
Some of you will understand that tereré is the colder (and better) version of the Argentinian Mate, a sort of unique herbal tea. However, the context of tereré is very particular in Paraguay. People are constantly getting together for breaks and hangouts to sit in a circle and pass around the tereré. Therefore, this invitation would also be an invitation to hangout and drink some tereré. It would be used for people who are too lazy to ask someone to hangout and would instead just send them this emoji. In the context of Paraguay, this action would be very self explanatory, which therefore means that people would understand right away that this was an invitation to hang out. This then means that it fits the enclosed context of “universality” stated in both “The Jump for Universality” and “Person in Lotus Position”. As the 99% invisible podcast recommends, it is also not a trend, since it is a traditional event that has been happening for centuries in the country. Given these two reasons, I believe I could actually make a very arguable case in the hypothetical Unicode Paraguayan Emojis Competition.
There were no recommendations for change in this emoji, most of my friends told me that this was their favorite one since they say “Who’s up for a tereré” on a daily basis, so I therefore decided to keep it as it is (despite the design criticism of “the herbs look like avocado” and “the hand looks like feet”).
Sombrerito Piri – “Que Paraguay”
This last emoji caused most of my reflection on the whole culture and thought process that goes behind emojis. I did all of them and sent them for feedback, and only then did I do the readings and hear the podcast. It was very interesting to see how a lot of the feedback I got resonated with what was being discussed in both assignments. As you can see, what I have here is a Paraguayan hat, mostly known as Sombrero Piri. When I sent it to my designer friend, his first reaction was “I love the first one and the second one, but the third one doesn’t have a clear meaning. It looks like you just did it to complete the task”. I must admit, I did have a lot of trouble coming up with a third emoji. With all of the previous emojis, I had a clear idea of the interactions I wanted to portray. However, for my last emoji I wanted to encompass a common phrase we use Que Paraguay, that is SO Paraguay. When I explained this to my friend, he was more understanding of what I wanted to portray. We took a while to think about when we would use this emoji and he finally came up with the situation: “Hey dude, my car window just shattered because a mango fell on it”, and then he would send the Que Paraguay emoji. My parents had a similar reaction to the one of my friend, at the beginning they didn’t really know what to make of the emoji. It was not similar to the previous two, which were clear actions that we see at a daily basis. In David Deutsch’s essay “The Jump to Universality”, he mentions that changing the phonetic representation of the word “treason” to a symbol of its own would be tedious. Whenever you are embodying a specific term to a symbol and want to use that symbol to communicate, he said “one would somehow have to inform all intended readers of the meaning”. The same thing applies to my Sombrero Piri, it has a symbolical meaning rather than the action meanings found in my previous emojis. This therefore makes it harder for people to interpret it without asking “What does it mean” or “when would I use it”.