Updated July 18, 2017 13:43:11

Apple has marked World Emoji Day by dropping the list of new characters it will include in its iOS 11 update later this year.

But a certain 2 per cent of the population aren't celebrating.

Why? Because while we'll get zombies, dinosaurs, people doing yoga, a woman wearing a headscarf, a man with a beard, a breastfeeding mother and a "mind blown" expression (and much more) on our phones this spring, there are still no official plans for red-haired emojis.

Redheads have been calling for their own characters since 2015, when Apple expanded its keyboard to include a larger variety of races and genders.

So why is it taking so long? It's just a matter of giving some emojis a makeover right?

Well, no. It turns out the process is much more complex than you might think.

Let's take a look:

There is no one organisation responsible for "making" emojis.

Instead, members of the public pitch ideas for new characters to the Unicode Consortium (UC), a panel made up mostly of representatives from some of the world's biggest tech companies, including: Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Google, Huawei, and Netflix.

If approved, tech companies are then responsible for designing their own characters.

If you had a good idea for a emoji, first you would have to write a proposal.

The UC provides a step-by-step guide for how to do that, but it's basically a letter in which you have to include:

Once that's done, you would then need to submit it to the UC, where it is referred to the Emoji Subcommittee.

The subcommittee is co-chaired by Mark Davis from Google and Peter Edberg from Apple.

If your pitch ticks all the boxes, it's then referred back to the UC and put to a vote.

Once approved, it then needs to be developed by each tech company.

Ever wondered why Apple emojis look different to Google emojis?

Because during development, each company is able to get creative and design their own unique version of the character.

And then it's up to each company when they want to roll them out.

According to Unicode, it takes about a year from start to finish, and that's why redhead emojis are yet to grace our screens.

Despite over two years of calls for the characters, they were only officially pitched to Unicode in April.

That means sorry friends, you'll be waiting until at least early 2018.

Topics: human-interest, arts-and-entertainment, popular-culture

First posted July 18, 2017 13:26:55

The rest is here:

Why are there still no redhead emojis? Because they take longer to make than you might think - ABC Online