Put on your smiley face and read this interesting piece about how the increasingly ubiquitous Star Wars emoji were designed.
Everyone knows the characters of Star Wars by heart. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie—they’re old friends. Such intimate fandom should make designing emoji for something so iconic as Star Wars easy, right? Quite the contrary. It’s a challenge that places the designer at the mercy of rabid fans—not to mention George Lucas—with strong opinions and high expectations.
Still, Los Angeles designer Truck Torrence pulled it off with the 52 Star Wars emoji included in a branded Star Wars app from Lucasfilm. The cute emoji perfectly capture the characters inhabiting that galaxy far, far away and offer something far cooler than all the stuff people typically use in pictogram-based communication.