Nicolas Loufrani: Who Invented Emojis?

Although Shigetaka Kurita is often credited as the original emoji creator, the story is more complex and nuanced – and what better time to tell this story than following World Emoji Day, which takes place on 17 July each year. Nicolas Loufrani, owner and CEO of the London-based Smiley company, also deserves recognition for this global visual language used by billions of people online today, as detailed in his interview on the Smiley website. 

The misconception largely arises due to popularisation of the word ‘emoji’, a Japanese word dating back centuries, with origins in the Edo era. Since 2008, use of the word has skyrocketed globally, thanks to its adoption by Apple. After Apple launched its first range of emojis, other companies quickly followed suit, including the likes of Microsoft, Samsung, WhatsApp and Google. 

The first Smiley on a mobile phone was licensed to Alcatel by the Smiley Company in 1997. A basic pictogram at this point, it formed part of the handset’s welcome message and, unlike modern iterations, could not be sent from phone to phone.  

Shigetaka Kurita’s icons were monochromatic pixel pictograms, which Nicolas Loufrani describes as incredibly smart and beautiful representations of concepts on a limited 12 x 12 dot canvas. Loufrani readily agrees that Kurita’s emojis deserve a permanent presence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Nevertheless, Kurita’s pictograms bear little resemblance to modern emojis and were more akin to the Macintosh pictograms created by Susan Kare in 1984. 

Nicolas Loufrani describes Shigetaka Kurita’s emojis as ‘industrial design at its best’. Nevertheless, it is plain to see that they bear little resemblance to the emojis of today. These cartoonish, round, yellow emojis with black eyes and mouths and red tongues look closer to the work of Nicolas Loufrani. 

The Smiley Company’s original collection comprised 11 separate categories, namely moods, countries, flags, food, fun, celebrations, occupations, animals, sports, planets and zodiac. By 2003, that range had expanded considerably, with more than 887 original icons in the Smiley dictionary divided into a total of 23 categories, including new genres such as religion, science, transportation, weather, flowers, celebrities and instruments. Most notably, the collection included icons depicting a vast range of human emotions through the inclusion of 130 mood icons. 

By 2009, SmileyWorld’s toolbar featured thousands of icons, which were sorted into dozens of categories. These digital stickers could be inserted into digital text in both still and animated form.  

When Apple subsequently launched a range of emojis in Japan in 2008, the tech giant also sorted the icons into categories, including emotions, animals and flags. With a 3D-style format, white highlights and orange shadows, they bore a striking similarity to Nicolas Loufrani’s Smileys, albeit inspired by Japanese anime and manga culture, with Apple’s iterations featuring open mouths and a white line of teeth, with the addition of eyebrows in some instances. 

In 2010, Unicode began including emojis in its protocol, boosting their global popularity significantly by facilitating their use across different platforms and devices. Today, Unicode’s emojis are categorised in 10 icon genres, comprising 1,474 unique characters. It is the computer scientist Scott Faulman who is credited with defining the protocol for the use of ASCII emoticons on message boards in 1982.  

Nicolas Loufrani’s original Smileys were intended to replace ASCII emoticons. Composed of punctuation, these had developed as a form of digital art. Nevertheless, ASCII emoticons were challenging to decipher, save for the most famous examples. 

The Smiley dictionary systematically removed the dash symbol that represented a nose, sorting icons into 11 separate categories. The Smiley Company licensed its Smileys to product brands and mobile phone manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and Nokia. At this point, they were used in monochromatic pixel form, as the smartphone did not yet exist. Coloured versions of the icons were promoted as gifs from the official SmileyWorld website. Their use was not monetised, with no advertisements included on the toolbar, unlike other companies. Nicolas Loufrani’s sole priority was simply promoting the integration of graphics in text communications as a new cultural norm. 

The Smiley Company intended its gifs to be used across all computer brands, email services and instant messaging platforms, with the goal of creating a new digital language that was universal in nature. In addition to sorting icons into categories such as moods, foods and celebrations, SmileyWorld began categorising them alphabetically, translating all the traditional ASCII emoticons into graphic emoticons for the first time to provide a form of visual language. 

When Apple launched its first series of emoticons in 2008, they were available only on its new line of Japanese iPhones. They were launched as ‘emojis,’ a common Japanese term, rather than the English term ‘emoticon,’ and subsequently rolled out worldwide with later versions of the iPhone. 

Unicode was the most significant contributor to the emojis global success story, with key players like Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Meta further expanding the reach of this universal language by standardising its use as a logographic system. Today, millions of global users send and receive emojis each day, enjoying emojis just like any other font, sending them seamlessly from one device to another.  

Nicolas Loufrani has publicly praised companies like Apple for developing the technology and networking capabilities required to establish emojis as a universal language, elevating it far beyond his own technical ability and expanding its reach exponentially on the global stage. Today regarded as a purely artistic project, the original Smileys continue to be added to and incorporated in marketing campaigns, events, and products through creative partnerships.  

While Nicolas Loufrani’s original vision was to develop a logographic system to serve as a universal written language, his icons have not been used as an official keyboard text. Rather, Unicode has defined emoji culture globally just as emperors or clergies would define how writing systems were to be used in ancient times.  

Today, Unicode is behind all critical decisions regarding emojis, such as their racialisation, and deciding hot new icons and words. Nevertheless, in an interview with the London Evening Standard, Nicolas Loufrani pointed out that the emoji keyboard remains somewhat limited, asserting that at least another 3,000 icons should be added. 

In a 2017 interview with Huffington Post, he also explained that the original Smileys were yellow since they were intended to be race and gender neutral. The iconic yellow colour embodies the colour of the sun, the root of all life on earth, with Loufrani’s intention being to create a medium that represents emotions for everyone.  

In 2024, the original Smileys have evolved into a world of children’s characters, with Mini Smiley, a musical cartoon, now streaming on YouTube. Following a lifetime of creative work around emotion and communication, it seems only fair that Nicolas Loufrani is credited for his significant contribution to the creation of emojis.