Emojifonts

Emojifonts refers to typefaces that include emoji glyphs or are designed to render pictographic emoji characters alongside or instead of traditional text. They bridge typographic design and pictorial symbol sets standardized by Unicode, enabling color and monochrome emoji in digital communication, user interfaces, and print.

The development of emojifonts evolved with the inclusion of emoji in the Unicode Standard and with platform vendors creating proprietary emoji sets. Major operating systems and services provide their own emoji fonts, which reflect distinct visual styles while mapping to the same Unicode code points. Open-source projects and vendor releases (for example, widely used projects that supply set collections) offer alternatives for developers and designers.

Technically, emojifonts can be packaged as TrueType or OpenType fonts and may implement color and multicolor glyphs using formats such as COLR/CPAL, CBDT/CBLC, SVGinOT, or bitmap tables. Emoji presentation selectors, zero-width joiner sequences, and skin-tone modifiers are handled at the rendering layer and by font glyph coverage. Compatibility varies by renderer and platform.

Uses range from messaging and social media to UI iconography and branding. Design considerations include legibility at small sizes, cultural interpretation, and inclusive representation. Licensing and intellectual property vary: some emoji fonts are proprietary, while others are permissively licensed or open source, affecting distribution and commercial use. As a visual language, emojifonts continue to evolve with standards and user expectations.