Emojis are unique. They are helping in universalizing languages through emoticons and at the same are changing ways we communicate via text. Resorting to the Unicode Consortium for harmonization of all the emojis that could exist is a useful solution that puts an approval protocol for every emoji that’s proposable, therefore discarding ones that do not make a strong case. Yet, it also comes at the expense of discarding many other creative emoji ideas that one could defend some legitimacy for.
Designing emojis that were infused of a local flavor was slightly at odds with this. As put by Mark Davis, president of the Unicode Consortium, for each new emoji possibility, him and the group ask themselves: “Does this break new ground … or is it going to be extremely popular?” The fact that emojis are permanent additions to the language once approved, goes to show that those careful considerations are worthy of being taken.
I am from Senegal, a country home to many peculiar things I wouldn’t find anywhere else. For the emojis I chose, I decided to focus on things that every Senegalese person would recognize right away.
My first emoji was: the ‘gaal’. Gaal is the Wolof term for a pirogue, a long, narrow canoe made from a single tree trunk used by artisanal fishermen in Senegal. The name ‘Senegal’ itself stems from the Frenchization of ‘Sunugaal’, which means: Our Pirogue. Senegal is a coastal country and fish is our first export. I myself grew up in a neighborhood that used to be a fishermen dwelling, not far from the Atlantic Sea shores.
The people I showed it to recognized it immediately, the bright motifs of the little boat gave it away soon enough. Aphee Messer, who designed the “Person in Lotus Position” emoji uses a framework for emoji-creation that emphasizes one thing: it has to be something that a lot of people do. It twisted that framework a little bit in my case: it had to be something people knew instantly.
My second emoji looked to illustrate the most popular sport in Senegal: wrestling or as we call it in Wolof “lamb”. Assisting to a wrestling match is a cultural experience to take on its own as the actual combat is the end of a series of pre-events including traditional dances called “baku”, mystic baths, taunting, praise singing in the wrestler’s ethnic tongue and so much more. This plus the large difference in style and dress up is what separates Senegalese wrestling from Greco-roman-like wrestling. It is not uncommon to see anything from 4-year old kids to grown adults wrestling at the beach or at local tournaments organized in most neighborhoods called “mbapatt”.
On this emoji, I used an original picture of a wrestling contest, lasso’ed the background out and increased the contrast and blue settings to get a darkened image that resembled that allows focussing on the wrestlers’ embrace as and common silhouette as a whole. The cone-like speakers on each side symbolize the cheers and weight that each wrestler has on them as they most of the time defend the honour of their entire neighborhood or village.
My third emoji set out to be the most emoji-like in style. It is very colorful and could definitely pass for an emoji if reduced to a very small pixel size. Anyone could make out that it is a car, some sort of a mini van. That, is what Senegalese have named the “car rapide” – which translates to “fast car -. It’s anything but fast. Yet its preponderance around town has turned it into a symbol of local urban transport, almost nearing a flagship status. A tinkered and welded times and again version of French car manufacturer Renault’s 1000kg model, the “car rapide” is a moving museum, sporting many inscriptions on its sides in wolof, french of arabic that praise God or the local religious figures that helped strengthen Islam into Senegal. The insides are full of photos of star local wrestlers, marabouts, local footballing glory, even personal photos of the driver. It is a cultural experience for a foreigner, yet a daily aspect of the random urban Senegalese dweller.
Overall, the feedback I got was quite what I expected given the lines I set out for myself. Friends I showed them to recognized them right away, though they did not expect those to be emojis; they thought more along the lines of them being images.
Whilst working on this project, I came across this project by Bleacher Report called The NBA emojis we wish we had (https://thelab.bleacherreport.com/nbaemoji/). I found them pretty good and quite related and satisfying of what this homework assignment asked. To a community of basketball aficionados, many inside references could be easily understood from them and they sort of constitute a larger ecosystem of the basketball & rim emojis that already exist in the Unicode to represent the sport.
Y.