Bye-Bye, Blob! Say Hello to the New Google Emoji

Say goodbye to the blob,

and hello to the squishy circle.

Google's rolling out brand new designs

for its Android emoji, and they look,

well, a lot like the emoji you see on other platforms.

Gone are the blob and the goofy gumdrop,

and in its place, a symmetrical circle

that's just a little bit squishy.

This isn't the first time Google

has given its emoji a facelift, let's go back to 2012,

that's Jellybean, in Android years,

when Google first introduced emoji.

These black and white characters were like mascots

for the Android brand, you had smiling droids

and frowning droids, and simple gestures, like a thumbs up.

They brought a whole new dimension to text messaging,

but the little aliens weren't great

at clearly conveying emotion.

In 2013, Google introduced the blob.

These new emojis still looked like the droid,

but Google stretched them out and painted them yellow

and ditched the extraterrestrial antenna.

The blob brought with it a whole new range of emotions,

a way to convey genuine panic or confusion,

or even a way to flirt, all without using any words at all.

Over the next few years, Google refined the blob,

squishing and shaping them until eventually,

all Google emoji were molded into the gumdrop,

a little spherical character that looked straight at you.

Along the way, Google introduced new expressions, too,

like a face for when you're laughing so hard

that you're rolling on the floor.

As emoji became more popular, Google expanded the range

of characters on its platform

until there were thousands of them.

In 2016, that included a whole redesign of emoji people,

including a range of skin tones, of genders,

and now, the squishy circle.

Google's new emoji are designed on a grid,

and draw from a handful of reusable parts

that can be mixed and matched to create new designs.

The goal, Google says,

is to give its emoji a more consistent look and feel,

no matter where they show up,

because emoji aren't just the silly characters you use

to text your friends,

they're full on communication tools used

by everyone from your sister to government officials

across dozens of different platforms,

and that means we need a consistent design language,

so that the emoji you choose

on Android still send the same message

when they show up on IOS.

(upbeat electronic music)