Nicolas Loufrani: Biodiverse Emojis
16 January 2025
5 Mins Read
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Franklin Loufrani founded the Smiley Company to spread a global message of hope and positivity. He created the original Smiley in 1972 as part of a ‘feel-good’ campaign published by France Soir. Basically, they came up with those designs to lift the public mood.
Franklin Loufrani’s iconic Smiley face has become a logo of optimism and joy. In fact, today, this logo has recognition all over the world. Simultaneously, the Smiley Company has become one of the largest licensing companies worldwide.
Who Is Nicolas Loufrani?
Nicolas Loufrani, Franklin Loufrani’s son, joined the Smiley Company in 1996. While Nicolas Loufrani is not the emoji owner or creator, he said that Smileys had undoubtedly inspired emojis in a 2017 interview with Vice.
Nicolas Loufrani took his father’s original Smiley face icon and developed an entire language around it. Here, he used a Smiley to portray various emotions. Also, he came up with the concept of a Smiley in sunglasses to mean ‘cool.’Moreover, there is a Smiley with hearts as eyes to express love.
In addition to emotions, Nicolas Loufrani also developed several other graphical emoticon categories. These include sports, objects, food, celebrations, and more. In fact, leading tech companies subsequently adopted them when they launched their emojis.
What are Biodiverse Emojis?
Biodiverse emojis help represent different life forms on Earth. These include plants, microorganisms, animals, fungi, etc. According to many biologists, if emojis are biodiverse, there shall be more awareness of biodiversity and conservation.
Basically, it is not surprising that people represent large animals more through their emojis. For example, they use more dogs, cats, monkeys, lions, tigers, etc. This is because there is a human tendency to be more aware and empathetic towards organisms that are closer. For instance, vertebrates are much closer to humans than invertebrates.
Current State of Biodiverse Emojis
Many research suggests that most emojis have a bias towards using animals. These include mostly vertebrates. On the other hand, plants, microorganisms, and fungi are underrepresented. Apart from that, people use multiple emojis to represent some animals, while they use only a few emojis to represent others.
Improvement of Biodiverse Emojis
The following are some of the things that need improvement to make emojis biodiverse:
- More representation of fungi, plants, and other microorganisms is necessary.
- There is a dire need to represent more marine animals.
- More emojis are necessary that represent mollusks, arthropods, annelids, and cnidaria.
- There is also a need to represent roundworms or flatworms.
Adding Emojis
The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee is responsible for choosing the emojis that are available on stock platforms. Generally, such platforms include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc. However, it also allows you to suggest emojis, but you need to make an argument about why such an emoji is necessary.
Why Are Biodiverse Emojis Necessary?
Apps and Software like iOS, Android, Messenger, or WhatsApp use emojis. In all these cases, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee is responsible for approving all stock emojis available today.
However, in recent years, biologists have suggested that the library is insufficient. They complained that those lists are skewed toward animals like lions, tigers, and bears. They leave out plants, fungi, and microorganisms underrepresented.
In 2019, in an interview with the Standard, Nicolas Loufrani said Unicode should have thousands more icons. He complained about the restriction of freedom of speech.
What Is the Job of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee?
The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee is the body that is responsible for deciding which stock emojis appear on all apps. Hence, it updates the catalog regularly, such as adding more human skin colors and genders.
Basically, emojis form a major part of global communication today. As a result, biologists suggest that a more varied biological emoji catalog could aid conversations. In fact, they want to link conservation with biodiversity.
Society is getting digitized constantly. Hence, scientists call upon the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee to recognize the potential of emojis to improve awareness. This helps them raise appreciation of the diversity of life on earth.
Connection Between Emojis and Biodiversity
The University of Milan came up with a project. Here, they categorized every emoji related to animals and nature. Using the website Emojipedia to analyze the current line-up, researchers found that while there were 92 animal emojis.
On the other hand, there were only 16 plants and just one solitary fungus and microorganism. Even among animals, the team found a diversity issue.
For example, Emojipedia includes multiple bears and a very genus-specific bald eagle. However, animals like crocodilians and ants are only identified at a family or genus level. Overall, 76% of animal emojis are vertebrates, while just 16% are arthropods, 4% are mollusks, 2% are cnidarians, and 1% are annelids, with platyhelminth or nematode icons.
Researchers from the University of Milan described this divide as ‘problematic.’ However, they conceded that biodiversity did appear to be increasing in Emojipedia.
Meanwhile, if one compares it with the catalog for 2015, the number of animal emojis had more than doubled. For instance, in 2020, there were more annelids as a nondescript worm. The first cnidarian emoji appeared the following year as a coral.
Making Emojis Biodiverse: What Is the Solution?
The University of Milan paper, which iScience published, points out that emojis facilitate the direct expression of emotions and ideas in digital communication. Also, they contribute to discussions on biodiversity conservation.
However, as the paper explains, the ability of emojis to represent the ‘tree of life’ remains largely unexplored. Although current emoji catalogs embrace a broad range of animal species, many other genera remain underrepresented. Generally, these include particularly microorganisms and fungi.
The team from the University of Milan has called upon the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. This is to approve more emojis portraying underrepresented genera. Hence, the goal is to showcase the importance of biodiversity for biosphere functioning.
Wrapping Up
Nicolas Loufrani rightly pointed out the need for biodiverse emojis. Once people use more such emojis, they shall be aware of such organisms. Hence, there will be more attention and funding for preserving plants, fungi, and microorganisms.
Do you have more information and suggestions to add regarding biodiverse emojis? Please share your ideas and opinions in the comments section below.
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