Emily Simpson, a content strategist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, is on a personal crusade to help emojis better reflect the actual world around us and—in particular—dwellers of the sea. In the meantime, she has managed to convince Unicode officials to redesign a couple of emoji like the squid and oyster (to better reflect what they actually look like) and also fixed how jacked up the shark’s fins were.
Correcting the Inaccuracies
So, when Emily Simpson realized the shark emoji on her phone didn’t have the proper anatomy, she decided to do something about it.
She worked with tech giants like Google, Apple, Twitter to make the fish emojis as realistic as possible. She redesigned the squid emoji, which originally showed a siphon in the middle of its face when really it should be located at sucker number four to get water to the gills quickly, and the oyster emoji, with a pearl on top instead of in the muscular wall around their inner organs.
But Simpson’s meticulous eye for detail didn’t end there. She also collaborated with Google in 2019 to give its shark emoji a pronounced upper lobe of the tail — you only knew from context that both sides were even worse for apple-bitting rhythm — and place its eyes on either side of the octopus’ head, granting those animals true panoramic vision. These changes, although small, contribute in making for realistic nature.
Accurate Representation is Critical
Simpson says that it is important for us to see the natural world in our digital spaces more accurately because this creates endless discussion possibilities through these sources, not to mention an opportunity to appreciate how diverse and beautiful our planet really is.
Simpson has a unique perspective on the value of environmental education and conservation as a content strategist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In this case, she finds emojis which despite their smallness — emoji are about the size of a mote of dust on her screen, after all — to be wielded effectively as information and charm, animated gif yard signs in support of a rekindled common sense of wonder, even for those whom the natural world might be nothing more than an abstraction.
And this has not only been targeted on marine life. Simpson has also promoted the need to represent non-megafauna if attitudes and behaviours towards animals are going to change. She is of the opinion that if we introduce these beings to the digital arena along with all their other modern creations, it will allow us to digitally cultivate empathy for life at large.
Conclusion
Emily Simpson is doing her best to see accurate portrayals of marine creatures on emojis because reasonsEnvironmental education and conservation… Her adjustments of these online avatars in cooperation with major tech companies demonstrate not only a move towards greater representation, but also the facilitation of engagement new pathways for people to interact with and celebrate nature. The work of Simpson is a great example of how one person can be a force for good within the apparently small and seemingly trivial field of emojis.
