&Walsh creates hundreds of new emojis to help designers express themselves in isolation

Designed to help us express ourselves under lockdown, the emojis are compatible with Slack, Instagram Stories (as they'll be uploaded to Giphy), iMessage and WhatsApp. They'll be available to use from today, Thursday 23 April.

"Now more than ever we need more ways to express ourselves in isolation, as communication is all digital," Jessica Walsh tells Creative Boom. "We're all going through unique and difficult times, and this calls for new emojis to communicate these shared struggles. We hope these can provide some delight or comic relief to people's day. Or just make it a little easier to communicate how shitty people are feeling!"

We love all the client-related emojis, pointing to some of the common frustrations surrounding clients, freelancing and design in general. "Make it bigger!" reads one. There are little characters wearing suits on top but pyjamas below. Hipsters with outgrown beards, tributes to the most sacred object of 2020, i.e. toilet paper. And clever twists on some of our most cherished software.

"Our team communicates digitally via Slack, Keynote presentations, and Google Docs all the time. We started creating our own emojis for our own amusement to make our internal communications more delightful. At some point we realised other people would enjoy them, so we decided to give them away for free," Jessica explains.

"As visual people, we love emojis as a fun way to express our emotions and add joy to our conversations. However, we felt the current emoji set was limiting for the unique things we are going through as designers, and as people in 2020. With COVID-19 changing our lives, our team started to add emojis to the set that relates to life during these strange and difficult times."

Jessica also tells us that she and her team have been creating memes with the emojis which they plan to share on their Instagram channels shortly. In addition to releasing the emojis and memes, &Walsh is staging a contest on Instagram for people to create their own funny memes with these emojis. "The funniest ones will get reposted or featured on our Instagram feed, and we'll have prizes for the top ones," adds Jessica.

Follow &Walsh on Instagram for further announcements.