A Visual Study Of Emoji Expression In WeChat

With the development of the network,Emoji expression has become a necessary tool for people to communicate with each other in the world.Its appearance is simple and colorful and information can be conveyed in its limited scale,it makes Emoji full of charm.In 2015 the "Oxford dictionary" word of the year is not a word but an Emoji “Face with tears and joy”,this gives people a deeper understanding of emoji.And it also causes a worldwide discussion about whether the emoji is a kind of “word”.Most people think that Emoji originate from the symbolic expression ":)",which is born in 1985.In fact,the history of Emoji can be traced back to the pictographs in ancient times,because there is no systematic and spoken language at that time,people can only transfer information through painting and nonverbal language.Emoji is similar to pictograph which is "convey information by pictures".The difference is that now we have words and spoken language,"pictures" is no longer the only way to transmit information.The most important function of Emoji is to assist people to communicate,when unable to face face-to-face,it acts as the facial expression,tone and body language of the user,in order to reduce the probability of misunderstandings.And Emoji is built into the keyboard of smart phone.When you want to reply to a simple message,it can finish the job,saving users typing time.At the same time,Emoji is a worldwide emoticons,and its users cover the world.Unlike the Chinese emoticons or Japanese lovely text emoticons that has unique regional culture,This leads to the phenomenon of "one Emoji has multiple meaning"-the difference between culture and the environment makes users have different understanding on Emoji.Visually,the scale of Emoji is very limited,so designing emoticons that can deliver information accurately in 12x12's pixels is not a small challenge for designers.The Emoji are updated every year,and the content of the update is mainly proposals given by the users.Designers want to meet the users' needs as much as possible,but because they can't take into account the cultural background of each user,it will also lead to the deviation of information transmission.The emergence of social software "WeChat" has made people have a new way of communication,and also has a greater space for the right to speak.The global language of Emoji is also being used by more and more users in WeChat.WeChat is a social software mainly targeted at Chinese users.When Chinese users are communicating with WeChat and sending Emoji to each other,the probability of misunderstanding is relatively small because of cultural differences,but it still exists.This paper based on the study of the origin of Emoji and the analysis of its predecessors to find out the reason why emoticons can be quickly interpreted but still obscure,and also analyze the role of Emoji in the information transmission in WeChat.Finally,I will design a set of symbols of "Festival" in the Emoji through the conclusion.