How I Made It: Apple Emojis

you could choose from all kinds of emojis. A suspicious smiley face with a monocle, a hand getting a manicure, or a solo red boxing glove one of my favorites. But did you know that the first set of emojis for Apple products were drafted by a Colombian American woman. Ahila Guzman started as an Internet Apple in two thousand and eight while she was still in college, and her first project was to develop emojis from their original Japanese

versions into something new. Now, over ten years later, those little images have become well, for lack of a better word, iconic. Here's Ahila telling her story.

don't speak the same language. I've always relied in that feeling and that of trying to communicate with people in a really natural and simple way, and so designed to me was the perfect outlet and avenue to continue pursuing that goal. And that's how I sort of ended up basically doing my first project. At the time, the word emoji was not super known. It's a Japanese term, and so I actually didn't know what the word meant, and

I asked. Pretty soon someone kind of chuckled in the background and said, oh, it's a bunch of icons illustrations that express a feeling and emotion, and so I said, oh, okay, so I'm going to be drawing a lot and how many are there? And they said, oh, probably around close to five hundred, and I said, Oh, okay, I guess I really got to put my drawing cap on and start this project. So when I first started, I wanted to pick an emoji that I sort of felt comfortable

but also challenge at the same time. And that's why I started with the engagement ring. Because in my undergraduate class I studied industrial design and I kind of learned how to render metals, but the piece that I thought was really challenging was the diamond. And so my mentor, Raymond, really helped me to understand the technical skills that went behind them, as well as how to apply the apple

esthetic onto these icons these emojis. Back then, as an interron, when I started to create an emoji, I was inspired heavily by real life objects, and so I would find myself going to the grocery store to look at apples or strawberries and sort of borrowing details from that, also looking at textures like leather for a football, et cetera. And I think we Raymond and I definitely left our

little personality. For example, when he made the happy poop swirl, and pretty soon he created the ice cream cone and sort of swapped the swirl of the happy poop into the cone removed, the eyes, changed the color, and that was basically it, and so lots of giggles, lots of laughter. The turquoise dress, I really was inspired by a real dress that my sister had been creating for an event, and I figured, oh, you know, this is kind of

an unusual color combo. It's kind of iconic in my head, I'm going to base it off of that silhouette and that color pattern. And so just recently she found out that was the keys, and she also had a blast and can't stop texting it now. We were assigned obviously a large batch of emoji, and as this was my first time ever creating something like this, the beginning was

a little slow. I would make like one every two days, and the first one took me about three days, but very quickly I got faster and faster, and so I ended up making three or four a day, and especially the ones that were simple, like the set of hearts. Once you created the first one, it's easy to swap the color, so then you create you know, five or

six really quick. This has been about ten years, but if my memory serves me right, I created about one hundred and eighty through my internship, and several others once I became a full time employee a year later. But some of my favorites that I've created in that time were like the party popper, that cone with the confetti, the set of hearts, the engagement ring just because it has a different memory to me because it was the

first one, the Christmas tree, the pumpkin, the stars. I really did not imagine where they would end up and how much they would sort of become part of our everyday environment, not just the digital world, but also in the physical world through toys and other merchandise and decorations that you see. I think folks are drawn to emoji for a variety of reasons, but in my opinion, I think the biggest reason is that one, it's very fast, ideally to find what you're looking for and send it

to somebody. But I think the most important reason is it allows you to share sentiment to anyone, regardless of the language they may speak. But yeah, I think mostly for me, it's the universality where you can share them with anybody around the globe and still be understood. I think that's really powerful. When I was very young, when I moved to Florida at the age of eight, and I couldn't be understood, and I drew and I was understood, and I made a bunch of friends in the process.

I really think that the emoje you sort of capture that sentiment. You can compose entire sentences in some ways with visuals and people will understand and you can connect.

host and executive producer Maria Jojosa. Remember join us on our next episode. In the meantime, look for us on all of your social media. I'll see you on Ninstegram, Yes, Rosina, Yes.