⚠ Note: After reading through the nuances of text vs. emoji style presentations, the scope of this goal will be simplified and this section will be rewritten. The majority of this section is no longer valid.
The first goal of this work is to contribute to the excellent work provided by GNU Unifont and normalize its emoji glyphs by focusing on three consistency criteria listed below in order of priority. The adjustments proposed here are intended to contribute positively to the project, ensuring that the emoji glyphs in Unifont are as cohesive, user-friendly, and standards-aligned as possible while respecting the unique character and legacy of the font.
Be consistent within Unifont. Many emoji glyphs in the font exhibit inconsistencies in shapes, sizes, and positions, both in their overall forms and in their individual components. For instance, while most of the “smiley” emoji are drawn within a standard 15×14 circle, some deviate from this standard size without a clear reason. Similarly, the shapes and positions of commonly used eye and mouth types can be standardized. These adjustments will help create a more cohesive look and feel across the set, while still allowing for individual glyphs to retain their unique character where appropriate.
Be consistent with the official guidelines. The glyph designs should adhere to the specifications and recommendations outlined in the various emoji and CLDR documents and data files. Extensive details can be found in the Design Guidelines section of Unicode® Technical Standard #51.
Many existing glyphs appear to have been designed solely based on the formal character name and representative glyph in the Unicode code charts, without sufficient consideration for the information provided by the emoji and CLDR documents and data files. For example, the code point U+1F603 has the formal name “SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH”, but a CLDR short name of “grinning face with big eyes”. As noted in the Unicode documentation:
“The formal Unicode name of a Unicode character does not determine its appearance. […] In many cases, the consensus for the best depiction has evolved in the time since the original formal name was standardized, and the preferred depiction is now better reflected by the CLDR short name.”
Be consistent with industry practice. This criterion is specifically detailed in Unicode® Technical Standard #51 but is explicitly listed here for emphasis. Many emoji fonts and vendors have agreed upon a set of visual conventions and styles that increase interoperability and user familiarity across platforms. Aligning with these practices helps maintain consistency and avoids user confusion when interpreting emoji designs.
While consistency with industry practices is encouraged, it is important to recognize that exact replication of existing designs is neither required nor always practical. Reasonable interpretation and creativity in representing emoji and other icons are valid and often necessary to accommodate diverse design contexts or technical constraints. The goal is to balance user expectations with flexibility in artistic expression and functionality.
The second goal of this work is to create extensions to GNU Unifont to add full support for emoji. These extensions are likely out of scope for the Unifont project. The extensions include:
The color palette used for the color glyphs is a custom palette that will be called “Human16” in this document.
The Human16 palette was carefully designed with the following goals in mind:
⚠ Note: This section will be expanded to include text style presentations for all code points and a minor rearrangement of the table. Details to come.
This project will provide two new fonts called “Comfont Emoji” and “Comfont Color Emoji” to complement Unifont. Comfont Emoji will use the monochrome emoji style glyphs and Comfont Color Emoji will use the color emoji style glyphs. Both will include full emoji support for sequences and variations. These fonts will contain only emoji glyphs and their text variants and will be dual-licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL) version 1.1 and the GNU General Public License Version 3 with the GNU font embedding exception. Unifont has full permission to incorporate these glyphs or redistribute these fonts when they become available. If Unifont does decide to fully incorporate and host these extensions, I will deprecate the Comfont fonts and archive this page. Otherwise, any unincorporated extensions will continue to be maintained and provided here.
The following table presents the proposed glyph designs. The Unifont column shows the current glyph in Unifont 16.0.02. The Comfont columns show the new glyph designs in text style (if the code point has a text style variation), monochrome emoji style, and color emoji style.
| Unicode | Unifont | Comfont | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code | CLDR Short Name | 16.0.02 | Text | Emoji | Color |
This project and the glyph designs on this page are licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3. The font files for this project will be dual-licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL) version 1.1 and the GNU General Public License Version 3 with the GNU font embedding exception.