skin tone modifier for smartphones will change the face of emojis

skin tone modifier will change the face of emojis
all images courtesy of  the unicode consortium

multicultural smileys, santas and dancing twins are soon to arrive on your smartphone. the unicode consortium — responsible for setting international standards of pictoral symbols — has drafted a proposal to introduce racially diverse emojis in the next major update. ‘people all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone.’ the report by google’s mark davis and apple’s peter edberg reads. ‘these characters are based on the six tones of the fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for dermatology.’

a 5-symbol modifier provides for a range of skin tones for a set of 151 humanlike pictograms. in application on a phone, for example, a long-hold on a figure can bring up a mini-palette of different skin tones.

a swatch glyph allows the phone user to choose the color they want their emoji to appear

a long-touch on a human figure can bring up a mini-palette of different skin tones

the five proposed tones are based on the fitzpatrick scale