The first emojis were born from a practical need. In 1999, Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita, working for telecom giant NTT Docomo, crafted the initial set of 176 characters to convey information quickly on early mobile screens. These simple 12x12 pixel images covered weather, traffic, and emotions. Their path to global dominance came in 2010 when the Unicode Consortium—an industry standards group whose members include Apple, Google, and Microsoft—formally adopted them. This single technical mo

Tech Guide Editor Stephen Fenech says July 17 marks world emoji day and the favourite emojis of users around the globe has been revealed as the “tears of joy” emoji. | Sky News Australia