Jeremy Burge


Jeremy Burge
is an emoji historian, founder of Emojipedia, creator of World Emoji Day and widely regarded as an expert on emoji.
Business Insider listed Burge in the UK Tech 100 in 2016, 2017 and 2018 dubbing him "The Emoji Maestro" while other publications have used terms such as "Emoji King" or "The Lord of Emojis".

Emojipedia

In July 2013, Burge started the emoji reference site Emojipedia which The Sydney Morning Herald reported had 23 million page views per month in 2017. Burge works as Chief Emoji Officer at Emojipedia overseeing editorial content on the site and has occupied this role full-time since 2016.
Burge worked with professional sportspeople Tony Hawk and Sasha DiGiulian to improve the accuracy of Emojipedia's sample images for the skateboard and rock climber characters respectively. Jenken Magazine reported: "While they were on the phone one day, Hawk sent Burge a picture of his own board" which was used as the basis of Emojipedia's revised skateboard design.

Unicode

Currently representing Emojipedia on the Unicode Technical Committee, Burge was previously also held a position as vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee from 2017 to 2019.
Described as a leading authority on emoji use, Burge urged Apple to rethink its plan to convert the handgun emoji symbol into a water pistol icon in 2016, citing cross-platform confusion. Emoji flags for England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 were added to the Unicode Standard in 2017 after a formal proposal co-authored by Burge was approved.

Writing

Burge is regular news contributor to Emojipedia and was responsible for many of the initial emoji definitions on the reference website. Additionally he has written for publications such Six Colors, Medium, and The Internet Review.

Podcasting

Burge has hosted Emoji Wrap, a podcast from Emojipedia covering "global emoji news and trends" since August 2016 and has interviewed notable guests such as Mark Davis, Myke Hurley, Jason Snell and Christina Warren.
The Guardian notes that Google product manager Agustin Fonts was "hesitant about shifting to a water pistol" when discussing the Android gun emoji with Burge on the Emoji Wrap podcast.

Public Speaking

The Evening Standard reported that Burge "lectured on the history and social impact of emojis" at TEDxEastEnd at London's Hackney Empire in 2017. In addition, Burge has spoken at conferences such as The Next Web in Amsterdam, Smart Future in Riga, Design Matters in Copenhagen and Úll in Killarney.
Institutions that have hosted Burge include Eton College, Eye Magazine, Google, London Design Museum, The British Library, and University College London.

World Emoji Day

is a "global celebration of emoji" created by Burge in 2014.
According to the New York Times, he created this on "July 17 based on the way the calendar emoji is shown on iPhones". Burge told Axios in 2017 that "Tim Cook tweeted about it this year so I was kind of excited about that".
In 2017 Burge discussed the origin of World Emoji Day and Emojipedia at AOL BUILD, attended the lighting of the Empire State Building "emoji yellow" with The Emoji Movie voice cast Patrick Stewart, Maya Rudolph and Jake T. Austin, and announced the winners of the annual World Emoji Awards from the New York Stock Exchange.
Saks Fifth Avenue hosted a "Saks Celebrates World Emoji Day" red carpet event in 2017 which was attended by Burge. On World Emoji Day 2019, Burge attended the launch of an exhibition at the National Museum of Cinema and spoke alongside Unicode Consortium co-founder Mark Davis at The British Library.

Guest appearances

Burge has appeared regularly on television and radio shows for ABC Australia and BBC and has also made guest appearances on networks such as CNN International, TWiT.tv, Relay FM and Cheddar.