Grandmother creates emoji to better reflect older people
LONDON — Emoji aren't just a means of embellishing our messages with poop, monkeys and salsa dancers. They're a way of expressing our identities.
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But, what if the information desk girl or the unicorn emoji don't represent who you are?
56-year-old Diane Hill — from Coventry, UK — is fed up of emojis that don't cater for the over-50s, and don't reflect what older people want to do and say.
The grandmother got in touch with the BBC, after it launched an outreach project in the Midlands asking listeners if the media could do more to reflect the lives and people around them.
Image: Chris Oxenbury
Hill complained to organisers that there were currently no emoji to reflect the lifestyles of older generations.
The idea for a range of emoji came out of some embarrassing emoji-related exchanges that Hill had had after injuring her back in a car accident.
Image: Chris Oxenbury
"I have a really bad back and I wanted to tell my friend about it with an emoji that looked like me when I writhed around the around the floor in pain," Hill told Mashable.
"Do you know what, stuff that I wanna say to my friends like "I'm going out shopping to spend the kids' inheritance", or an emoji that lets my kids and grandkids know that they're in big trouble, I can't find an emoji to depict that," Hill continued.
Image: Chris Oxenbury
Image: Chris Oxenbury
BBC Coventry and Warwickshire commissioned local artist Chris Oxenbury to design the emoji — or 'emoldji' — based on Hill's ideas.
The range of emoji includes things like spending the kids' inheritance money, false teeth falling out, memory pills, aches and pains.
Image: Chris oxenbury
The designs have been sent off to the Unicode Consortium for consideration in the hope that they would appear on mobile phones and devices across the world.
