The first emoji was created in 1999 by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. Kurita worked on the development team for I-mode. I-mode is the first mobile internet platform from Japan’s leading mobile carrier, DOCOMO. Kurita wanted to design to convey information efficiently. An icon to show the weather forecast rather than spelling out “cloudy.” So Kurita sketched a set of images that could select from a keyboard. Then sent on mobiles and pages as their characters.