Project Intent

Emoji are indispensable for daily communication. They are practical ( thumbs up-emoji ), funny ( grinning squinting face-emoji ) and sometimes quite bizarre ( pile of poo-emoji zany face-emoji weary cat-emoji zombie-emoji ). For us, emoji are much more than colorful images decorating fun short messages. We think they are rather part of an important and exciting development: the return of pictorial symbols to written communication. For the first time in history, it is possible to communicate with a combination of letters and icons. Now it becomes feasible to say things and convey meanings that were previously impossible.

Unfortunately, the creative variety of emoji has been rather limited so far, especially when compared to the incredible number of available fonts. At the moment, there is only a dozen emoji sets, most of them from big tech companies. These emoji are visually adapted to the respective appearance of their software platforms. In addition, the usage rights are often very restrictive (e.g. the terms of use of Apple’s emoji).

That is why we have developed OpenMoji as the first open source and independent emoji system to date. When designing the OpenMoji system, we have developed visual guidelines that are not linked to a specific branding. In addition, our goal was to design emojis that integrate well in combination with text.

OpenMoji is an open-source project of 50+ students and 2 professors of the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd (Design University) and external contributers.

Authors & Team

Benedikt Groß

Project initiators, supervision and tutorials

Daniel Utz

Project initiators, supervision and tutorials

Sofie Ascherl

Emoji design and styleguide

Miriam Vollmeier

Emoji design and styleguide

Kai Wanschura

Emoji design, classification and font creation

Johanna Wellnitz

Emoji design, styleguide and website

Jonas Roßner

Emoji design and examples of use

Marius Schnabel

Emoji design and website

Lisa Schulz

Emoji design and website

Mariella Steeb

Emoji design and examples of use

Sina Schulz

Emoji design and font creation

Vanessa Boutzikoudi

Emoji design and classification

Jose Avila

Emoji design and social media

Baris Camli

Emoji design and examples of use

Ronja Bäurlen

Emoji design and font creation

Rana Cakir

Emoji design and website

Lisa Thiel

Emoji design, styleguide and font creation

Hilda Kalyoncu

Emoji design and social media

Julian Grüneberg

Emoji design and social media

Laura Humpfer

Emoji design and social media

Emily Jäger

Emoji design and social media

Kai Magnus Müller

Emoji design and website

Martin Wehl

Emoji design and website

Selina Bauder

Emoji design and social media

Guemil Project

Emergency emoji

Abby Esquivel

Emoji design

Aileen Gedrat

Emoji design

Anne Frauendorf

Emoji design

Daniel Quiros

Emoji design

Daniela Ivandikov

Emoji design

Hend Hourani

Emoji design

Lois Proksch

Emoji design

Louisa Mantsch

Emoji design

Marleen Heine

Emoji design

Nadja Grün

Emoji design

Pascal Ligon

Emoji design

Sarah Mager

Emoji design

Sina Chlod

Emoji design

Vincent Seitz

Emoji design

Ferdinand Sorg

Emoji design

Laura Dworatschek

Emoji design and website

Jonas Dunkel

Emoji design and website

Ricarda Krejci

Emoji design

Antonia Wagner

Emoji design, website and social media

Evelyn Soos

Emoji design and website

Fanny Jung

Emoji design

Nicole Kornhaas

Emoji design and animations

Tonia Reinhardt

Emoji design

Yasmin Abdullahi

Emoji design and T-Shirts

Sam Eckert

Emoji design and iOS App

Selina Lange

Emoji design and animations

Rifat Can Erdogan

Emoji design and posters

Laura Schießer

Emoji design and stickers

Nadine Bartel

Emoji design and stickers

Florian Nagel

Emoji design and website

Hartmut Bohnacker

Emoji design

Carlin MacKenzie

Emoji design and proof reading

Felix Häberle

Emoji design and web development

Liz Bravo

Emoji design

Tara Lynn Connelly

Emoji design

Jasmin Fassler

Emoji design

Linda Hartmann

Emoji design

Kris Kowal

Emoji design and Dev Build System

Alexander Müller

Emoji design and some Code

Acknowledgements & Many Thanks

Contact

Daniel Utz & Benedikt Groß

Daniel D0T Utz @ hfg – gmuend D0T de

Benedikt D0T Gross @ hfg – gmuend D0T de