This project was about the communicative power of Emojis, both visual and verbal. We considered the place of Emojis outside their current locale, permeating the non-digital world.
When researching into Emojism, we envisaged a fantastical world with a ‘United States of Emojis’; where people brought up their children to speak Emoji, and dressed and produced art in Emojist style. In this world, books were published, job applications written, and political speeches delivered, all in Emoji. Eventually, we abandoned English altogether.
We envisioned Emojism affecting people’s lives on a day-to day basis. It quickly became evident that Emojism was far better suited to exist as a complementary add-on to existing linguistics. This, after all, is the way that Apple’s Emoji keyboard was originally intended; to augment, but not replace.
At this point, the research forked into two strains: one that carried the sense of Emojism as it’s own language, and one that viewed Emojism as an add-on to current linguistics. The idea of this linguistic add-on quickly grew into the idea of Emojism as a cultural and societal add-on too, of cult-like status. We developed the idea of multiple stages of Emojism - a gradation in intensity split up into five separate levels. As people used the Emoji keyboard in different intensities, they were able to adopt traits of our new ‘cult’, eventually becoming fully-fledged Emojists.