A COVENTRY grandmother has inspired a new range of emojis after being left red-faced when sending a whatsapp message to a friend.
Diane Hill was on the search for an emoji which represented a tanned character who had just returned from holiday after a friend sent a message saying she was ‘almost as tanned as she is’.
However Diane accidentally sent the ‘poo emoji’ – leaving the Walsgrave resident pondering whether new emojis should be introduced for older people.
Branded ’emoldjis’, the 56-year-old’s new range of emojis has attracted the attention of local artist Chris Oxenbury – who made Diane’s thoughts a reality.
With the help of BBC Coventry and Warwickshire, Diane is now hoping her ’emoldjis’ can hit the big time with the support of Unicode Consortium.
Speaking to The Observer, Diane said her inspiration for creating ’emoldjis’ came after she was suffering from pain following a car crash.
She said: “The crash left me with a back problem and I had no way of letting others know the pain I was in by using emojis.
“There’s very few emojis that get across what I want to say.
“I think it’s important older people keep up with social media – but when there’s no emojis of people with walking sticks or in a wheelchair there’s not much reason for them to do so.”
Diane, who is now an ambassador for Coventry, said she’s keeping her fingers crossed that the emoldjis can appear on mobile phones.
She added: “I was attending a BBC Open Doors event as a Coventry ambassador and that’s when the idea really came to life.
“It really took off and some digital work has been done since then which has created the end result which I’m really pleased with.
“When I first saw them I thought they were fantastic.
“I loved the ‘spending the kids inheritance one’ – I could send any of these emojis to my friends and they’d know what I mean.”
The emoldjis include feelings about ‘spending the kids’ inheritance’, ‘memory pills’ and ‘aches and pains’.
Siobhan Harrison, producer of BBC Open Doors, said: “Diane is a great character who was listening to our appeal for people in the community to come forward to tell us what media content they would like to see and hear.
“She told us that she was fed up of emojis which don’t cater for the over 50s and don’t reflect what they want to do and say.
“We were delighted to help and we think we’ve come up with a range which reflect the lives of the older generation in a more humorous way.”
