-Achievements come in all sizes.
In the beginning, all you had to do
was just crawl out of the ocean, and it was a big deal.
But these days, leaving a mark requires
someone with grand ambitions.
-Okay, um -- -And a steady hand.
-Yeah. Sorry.
I fidget.
-Maybe. -Uh, where was I?
Uh...
-This is Mark Bramhill. -Hello.
-Mark moves through the world
with the nervous energy of a small bird.
And one afternoon, he found himself chatting
with someone unexpected -- an emoji expert.
-He told me this thing that I didn't realize before --
anybody can propose an emoji.
-Anybody -- you, your mom, any of us --
could invent an honest-to-goodness emoji,
one that could bother billions of people all around the world.
-I was hooked.
How was I not going to make my own emoji after learning that?
-And he'd been tipped off to a concept
that was already in high demand.
-It was person meditating,
someone sitting in Lotus position,
you know, the one where you've got, like, your legs folded
in that little crisscross.
-Had you ever meditated before going into this?
-Oh, no, no.
I -- I was just kind of doing it as a public service.
-Mark obviously has a unique concept of public service.
But to him this was a serious endeavor, so he got to work.
It's hard to remember the first time I used an emoji.
One day my text inbox was just full of saxophones
and high-heeled shoes.
-Emoji originated in Japan in 1998, this, like,
little hack to send tiny pictograms.
But if you didn't have a Japanese phone,
they would show up a little, like,
rectangles with question marks.
-That's because there used to be a lot
of competing ways to show text on a screen.
-But then a few other people --
they start this group called Unicode.
-They're a collection of text engineers with the goal
to create one international standard.
Unicode could make sure every language
would look right on any computer.
-Anyway, Google wants to bring Gmail to Japan.
Apple wants to bring the iPhone.
But there would be this big problem
if you couldn't do emoji.
-So, they ask if Unicode would adopt emoji in the standard,
and Unicode agrees.
This arcane group of engineers --
they've become the gatekeepers to all the world's emoji,
and now Mark had to get their attention.
-I think if you were to ask the Unicode committee,
"Does yoga deserve an emoji?"
probably they'd say yes,
but you still need to go through these hoops.
-The biggest hoop being a written proposal
proving there's demand for your emoji
and that it hits their list of criteria.
For example, it can't be overly specific.
-Sushi is a good emoji that exists.
If you were like, "Oh, I want
a salmon roe emoji," that's too narrow.
-It has to have multiple uses. -They want to know,
"Is this something that can be used non-literally?"
-It can't overlap with existing emojis.
-They want something that's going to break new ground,
not all the breeds of dogs.
-No logos, brands, or real people.
-They're constantly getting Batman and Starbucks.
Those aren't gonna happen. -It can't be a fad.
-And for something that has been around for millennia,
it is pretty safe to say it is not a fad.
-Mark finishes up and sends his proposal
to Unicode's emoji subcommittee.
They do the first screening. -A week later, I got an e-mail
saying, "We have decided to forward
this on to the Unicode technical committee."
I was just elated and then also kind of terrified that,
oh, now it has to pass muster with the big leagues.
-At this point, most folks are done
and just wait to hear the decision.
But a rare few emoji hopefuls take the option
to go argue their case in person.
-How do you say no to that? -So, when I got that e-mail,
it also meant, "All right, I'm going to San Francisco."
So, it was November 7, 2016, I went in front of Unicode,
and, honestly, I was just, like, a nervous mess.
Before getting in my ride to go to this meeting,
it was just like, "I might as well practice one more time."
So I turn on my recorder.
Okay, I'm really nervous.
Uh, so, my proposed emoji is for person meditating.
This would be a single emoji.
It was rough.
I kept, like, forgetting basic words.
You know, maybe that would have been a good time
to be meditating.
You know?
-At the meeting, Mark steps into a room packed with engineers.
He takes a deep breath, checks his notes.
-And then it's just like, "All right, give your pitch."
And I think this would fill an important gap
in the current Unicode standard.
Thank you. Any questions?
There was some nodding of heads during my speech,
but, you know, at the end, it was like,
"Okay, we'll need you to leave."
And they took a secret vote
as to whether or not to make this an emoji.
-Any emoji that does get approved has one last step,
a graduation of sorts.
-Each company -- Apple, Google, Twitter --
has to drawn their own version of it.
-But Unicode doesn't really say what it should look like.
-For the dancer, it doesn't tell you
what kind of dance they're doing.
It doesn't say if it's a man or a woman.
-So each company has to interpret it in their own style
and, when it's ready,
release it into the wild with a software update.
-And so a few days go by and still hadn't heard anything.
-Another day passes and another,
until later that week, when Mark was scrolling through Twitter --
-And I saw a thing about the new emojis that were approved.
Looking around, seeing, like,
"Okay, they've got a woman in a hijab,
the hedgehog emoji, a man with a beard."
And finally I -- lower on the page, person in lotus position.
I did it. I'd made it.
I had create an emoji.
-What was the first thing you did
after you found out that it had made it?
-I think I called my mom.
You know, I'd been seeing people tweeting, like,
"Oh, my gosh, finally a yoga emoji.
This is the only emoji I've wanted."
My face just lit up.
-When Mark first started his emoji,
there wasn't a lot of guidance,
but if you look at Unicode's site now,
there are some good examples to follow,
suggestions on pitfalls to avoid,
and right in the middle you'll notice an immaculately typeset,
extremely enthusiastic, very well-written
sample proposal titled "Person meditating."