If you frequently use emojis 👋, you know there are times when it’s a struggle 😭 to find the perfect image. For all the ❤️and 👍we use daily, sometimes you’re left scratching your head 🤔and settling for a lackluster emoji that only half describes how you feel 🤦♂️.
Thankfully, much like the word-based English language, the world of emojis is evolving, with new emojis added regularly 🎉. While device companies and various platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.) decide how each emoji appears on their network, Unicode, an international committee responsible for computing standards, decides exactly which icons make up the emoji keyboard. So if anyone from Unicode is listening, here are 10 emojis we’d like to see on the next big update 🙏.
While it’s fun to bop your head and rock out from time to time, not every song requires the intensity of an electric guitar (an emoji that already exists 🎸). It would benefit us all to have access to an acoustic guitar emoji, which is far more appropriate for those mellow numbers — please reference the Ken sing-along in the Barbie movie. The truth is that the musical instrument options are lacking in general, and we could stand to add a banjo, an accordion, or perhaps bagpipes.
Some people love iced coffee year-round, but they have to settle for sending the Hot Beverage ☕ emoji, depicting a steaming cup. Think about it: If you text a hot coffee to your friend, they may think you want to sit down at a cafe and chat. But a tall iced coffee emoji says, “Let’s walk through the park and catch up, chilly treat in hand.”
Sending someone a Fire 🔥 emoji may mean that you think something is really cool — the exact opposite of a dumpster fire, which suggests disaster. Unfortunately, we only have separate Wastebasket 🗑️ and Fire 🔥 emojis. You can send the familiar “This is fine” meme in a pinch, but it would be nice to have a go-to emoji for those situations when everything goes awry.
A single red balloon evokes images of the evil clown Pennywise from It — not a birthday bash — and yet 🎈 is the only balloon emoji currently available. A bunch of balloons in festive colors, on the other hand, alongside the party popper and cake emojis, shouts “celebration.”
Is your child or grandchild in an angsty stage of life? Perhaps it’s just a phase, but it’s one that could be capitalized on by adding an angsty teen emoji. Maybe it could be an expressionless yellow smiley emoji with a goth-style haircut, or a more realistic teenage face rolling their eyes.
Few symbols are more evocative of the holiday season than gingerbread people, but a gingerbread cookie doesn’t exist on the emoji keyboard (yet). The standard Cookie 🍪looks like a chocolate chip cookie, and the other option is a Fortune Cookie 🥠. While we’re requesting sweets, we could use a candy cane emoji, too, as both would help brighten up texting during the holiday season.
Plenty of situations call for a mic drop — the end of an opinionated venting session, the perfect quip, a snappy retort. The Microphone emoji 🎤 exists, but we need some motion added to it, similar to how the Speaker Loud Volume emoji 🔊 demonstrates the levels of sound. A mic drop emoji has the potential to become one of the most used and popular emojis among texters who need some added emphasis.
As far as cheese emojis, we have a hunk of unmelted Cheese Wedge 🧀 and then a sophisticated pot of Fondue 🫕. A grilled cheese emoji would be perfect for texting a friend about a late-night craving or those nights when you get home from work and can’t be bothered to cook anything more complex.
The Stars and Stripes are represented by an emoji 🇺🇸, but it would be nice if we could display some home state pride as well. There are flags for almost every world nation, so maybe the flags of the individual U.S. states will be added at some point, too.
Do you have any emoji ideas you’d like to see become a reality? Let us know, and maybe we’ll submit a proposal to Unicode for an emoji the WordSmarts community would like to add to the emoji keyboard.
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