These days, no platform is complete without support for emoji. Those modern emoticons help us express all sorts of feelings, emotions, situations, and more. More than any company, Google has embraced emoji wholeheartedly, adding support for the latest inclusions without even needing a software update and developing Emoji Kitchen as a way to design your very own creations. Today, the company has unveiled another emoji font, this time as an old-school throwback with the inclusion of everyone's favorite blobs.
Early emoji were simple black-and-white 2D icons, designed for then-current phones to display alongside basic SMS. With Noto Emoji, Google is bringing that look back with some new twists and ideas. It's part of the Noto font family, developed to help fill in those blank blocks you'll occasionally see across the web on platforms where support for newer versions of Unicode is missing. While Noto's full-color standard emoji version is the one you're likely used to seeing throughout Google's suite of products, this new monochrome version might become your new favorite.
The idea behind this iteration is simple: bring emoji back to a more quaint time, avoiding realism for the sake of easily recognizable concepts. While some designs are a 1:1 translation, others are streamlined or modified to help fit this one-color approach. Flags, for example, use ISO's country codes, while others drop their gradients for a more laid-back approach. This font is also variable, so you can change the color or adjust the weight of any given emoji to match the mode you're looking to meet.
The biggest change — and the one that might get many of our readers to download this font — comes to Google's collection of "people" emoji. That's right: the blobs are back, mixing two types of nostalgia into one convenient package. They might be less yellow than before, but they're as fun and whimsical as you remember.
If Google's latest font sounds like your cup of tea, head on over to its official website for a more in-depth preview, or to download the entire package to the device of your choosing.