Pickerings Lifts is celebrating World Emoji Day on Tuesday 17 July by submitting a proposal to get a lift (or elevator) commemorated in the list of international emoji.

World Emoji day was established in 2014 to promote the use of emojis and way that the symbols have changed the way we communicate with one another.

The Unicode Consortium, based in the US, is responsible for authorising new emojis and invites members of the public to submit their proposals for new emojis for review.

Gary Rains spearheaded the campaign and said: “Although Pickerings Lifts is over 160 years old and is a traditional company at heart, we are also forward-thinking and keen to look towards the future.”

“After analysing web trends, we think there is scope for a new lift emoji and have submitted our own proposal to Unicode.”

“We believe this is a massive step forward for the lift industry and we’re looking forward to the feedback.”

If approved by Unicode, a lift emoji could be available on people’s phones by 2020.

Did you know?

• An emoji was named the Oxford Dictionary ‘word of the year’ in 2015
• Although emojis became popular in the 2010s, they first originated in Japan at the end of the 20^th century?
• There are currently over 2800 approved emojis – with the newest emojis including a pirate flag, lobster and fire extinguisher
• 92% of people online have used emojis at least once

Update: As of July 2019, we are delighted to say that our emoji proposal is still in the running for the next emoji update, Unicode 13.0!