When the first developer betas of iOS 9 were making the rounds, it was discovered that a new emoji was baked in (one of the new hundreds of new additions in that category), and now the story has finally been revealed as to its purpose.
Emoji have exploded in popularity, and considering they’re meant to be a way to communicate something with colorful images, the point behind the emoji has to be obvious (or at least eventually discernible). So when individuals started taking note of a new emoji under the “Symbols” category that Apple calls the “Eye in a Speech Bubble,” there was some obvious speculation what it might be intended to represent.
Thanks to an in-depth story from WIRED, that story has finally come to light.
According to the report, the emoji represents an entire Ad Council anti-bullying campaign, what’s called the “I Am a Witness” campaign. The entire focus is meant to encourage kids who witness bullying to stand up to it, and take action. The design was created by Goodby, which is an ad agency located in San Fransisco, California. The eye is meant to indicate to kids that they stand up for those who have been bullied.
Interestingly enough, when Goodby went to Apple to include the new emoji within their iOS keyboard, Apple gave the emoji and its representation praise, but had to inform the agency that it could take up to a year to get approved through Unicode, the text format used for emoji (because it’s widely available, and not platform-specific). Goodby had to use a trick to merge two images, called “zero-width joiner,” both of which were already approved by Unicode. As a result, Apple was able to fast track the availability of the emoji in its iOS keyboard, where it is now present thanks to the public release of iOS 9.1.
[via WIRED]
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