The latest Apple software update, iOS12.1, added 157 new emoji to the ever-growing library. This brings the total number to 2,823, which includes all the variations for elements like skin tone and gender. It may be hard to imagine a world before these little icons, but it was only a decade ago that they got their start.
Meet Angela Guzman, a former Apple design intern who worked with her mentor Raymond Sepulveda to create about 500 of the original emoji. At the time of her 2008 summer internship, she had a flip phone and had never heard of emoji before. Yet Guzman and Sepulveda would go on to design some of the most iconic graphics, including the happy poop, the colorful hearts and a seemingly endless variety of facial expressions.
The video above shows how it happened.