You’ve probably never heard of Angela Guzman, a former Apple intern and employee, but she’s likely influenced your life and how you communicate on a daily basis. For its tenth anniversary, Guzman has shared how she and her mentor designed Apple’s first emoji for iPhone back in 2008 in a Medium blog post.
In the summer of 2008, Angela Guzman received an internship to work at Apple before she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. Although she knew that she would be working with the iPhone team, she had no idea what exactly she would be working on.
Guzman says over a three-month period, her mentor Raymond taught her an immense amount about iconography and referred to it as a lesson in “humility and craftsmanship.” While other designers have since created many of Apple’s emoji, Guzman and Raymond created these hugely popular ones:
At first she didn’t know that Raymond was a world-renowned iconographer. Looking back, she realized how fortunate she was to learn from him.
As for the first emoji Guzman designed, it was the engagement ring, which she notes took a whole day to complete.
She also shares the minute details that were considered, even with something seemingly simple like a football or eggplant.
Guzman recounted a vague, yet smooth review with Steve Jobs before the first set of emoji were approved.
Some funny details include Raymond using the swirl from the smiling poop emoji for the ice cream cone. Guzman notes that her strong friendship with Raymond was a big part of their design success.
Emoji have become wildly popular over the last decade, and Guzman and Raymond’s work have paved the way the for Apple’s well received Animoji. Even Samsung is said to be working on a copycat.
Guzman is now a design manager at Google. As for advice for designers, Guzman shares the following:
Check out the full article on Medium.
