Who Is Jennifer Daniel? Known As 'The Woman Who Invents Emojis'

July 17 is celebrated as World Emoji Day, meant to celebrate emojis and how they've transformed communication. But why July 17? That's because this date features on the Calendar Emoji prominently. However, the inception of emojis goes way back to the modern era where they challenged the way we communicate.

In 1862, The New York Times misprinted “:)” in the transcription of former President Abraham Lincoln’s speech. That incident marked the first use of an emoticon. Since the inception of emojis in 1999, they have evolved and have become more inclusive. Emojis now feature multiple skin tones, women in hijabs, people in wheelchairs, and same-sex couples. And one woman has played a huge role in their evolution.

Jennifer Daniel

Artist, art director, and designer Jennifer Daniel is known as “the woman who invents emojis” and has been a major force behind gender-inclusive representations in them. Daniel leads the Emoji Subcommittee for Unicode and is the first woman on the subcommittee. The group works towards making text and emojis readable and accessible. She is also the Expressions Creative Director for Android and Google. Daniel’s first contribution to Unicode Standard was standardising gender-inclusive emojis.

Jennifer Daniel noticed that according to Unicode, 64 emojis were meant to be seen as gender-neutral and were not meant to signify gender. However, companies like Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, and Google often assigned genders to emojis that were meant to be gender-neutral.

For example, the Unicode standards considered the emoji of a construction worker as gender neutral, however, the companies decided to design them as construction men instead and added women as the secondary option.

Jennifer Daniel noticed that according to Unicode, 64 emojis were not meant to signify gender. However, Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, and Google often assigned genders to emojis.

World Emoji Day: Emojis Have Transformed The Way We Communicate

With Daniels leading the team, Google become the first company to add another emoji that was not considered either a male symbol or a  female symbol in 2019. The purpose was to acknowledge that gender is fluid and not binary.

Daniel created more than 30 gender-inclusive emojis including Mx Claus, Man in Veil, and Woman in Tuxedo.

Who is Jennifer Daniel

Jennifer Daniel grew up in Kansas, the United States of America and has worked for The New York Times and The New Yorker. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art and taught creative writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Jennifer Daniel has also published several children’s books. In 2015, her first children’s book titled Space! was published. The next year, her book The Origin of (Almost) Everything was published and in 2017 the book How to Be Human was published.

Speaking about the future of emojis, she said in an interview, "I think there will be a moment where it won’t just be about creating new emojis, it will be about creating experiences about how to interact with those emojis."

Like all of us, Daniel too has her favourite and least favourite emojis. While “hug” and the “cursed emoji,” are among her least favourite, she said that she favours the cowboy emoji in a 2018 interview.

Suggested Reading: World Emoji Day 2022: 12 Most Misunderstood Emojis Of All Time