World Emoji Day - Craft Your Map with Emojis

Every year on July 17th, we celebrate World Emoji Day, also known as World Emoji Icon Day or World Emoji Day. This day was proposed by Jeremy Burge, the founder of the Emoji search engine Emojipedia, and has been celebrated since 2014.

Emojis, as a form of character language, have to some extent broken through the limitations of textual expression.

Often in daily online chats, emotions and feelings that are difficult to convey in words can be more easily expressed with emojis.

The beauty of emojis lies in their ability to act as both verbs and nouns, depicting subtle emotional changes and even transcending language barriers to make expressions more vivid and lively.

No matter the context or background, a thousand words can be summed up with an emoji.

Emojis Meet Maps

Imagine using various emojis to express your impressions and experiences of a place in map creation. The presentation of the map would look like this:

Compared to using a single "pin" to mark a place, emojis can express personal impressions of a place more directly and flexibly.

For example, using an emoji to mark a hotpot restaurant, the simplest and most direct noun description is 🍲, while 🥵, 🥶, 😋 and other emojis provide more emotional expressions (spicy to the point of breathing fire, spicy to the point of sweating, just the right level of spiciness, etc.). This expression is dynamic and vivid, representing a unique personal insight.

This is also the creative experience that exping wants to bring to creators, allowing them to freely create and express their insights about places on the map.

The Map as a Canvas, Emojis as Brushes

Exping was initially built with the idea of using the "map" as a canvas, serving as an alternative creative medium.

In this case, emojis are the brushes 🖌️ in the hands of the creators.

As an independent form of expression, emojis convey different meanings in different contexts, and everyone has their own understanding.

Because of this, using emojis to mark places makes one's map more personalized, interesting, and vivid.

01 Unique Expression

The connection between people and places varies due to different personal insights, experiences, and feelings.

Exping provides creators with more than just simple place marking; it offers a form of communication that is happening and being used by more people, a new medium that makes the connection between people and places, and between people, more vivid.

The same place may convey different meanings on maps with different themes.

For example, "South China Botanical Garden",

On a camping-themed map, the creator would use "⛺️" to mark the place;

On a citywalk-themed map, the creator would use "🚶" to mark it;

On a travel map, the creator would use "👍, 😊, 😔" and other emojis to express their experience evaluation of the place.

On maps with the same theme, creators will use different emojis to express their experiences of places.

For instance, on a coffee map, some people prefer using ☕️ to mark cafes because it's straightforward; others might use 👩‍💻 to indicate places suitable for working or reading, and 🤠 for places good for chatting and relaxing.

Similarly, on a business distribution map, creators might use emojis to show the status of cooperation: "✅" for established partnerships, "⭕️" for ongoing negotiations; some might use "🎉" for successful deals and "📌" for pending ones.

02 Special Encrypted Language

In maps with significant records or commemorative meanings, emojis serve as a special "encrypted" language understood only by those related to the map.

In a couple's map, a creator might use "🥳" to mark a place, not because the place is highly rated, but because it holds beautiful memories for the couple.

Typically, people use heart emojis "❤️🧡💛" to express "liking." On an accessibility map, different colored hearts indicate the standards of accessibility facilities: a red heart means the facilities meet national standards, an orange heart means they are usable but not up to national standards, and a yellow heart means they are barely usable.

03 Intuitive Evaluation Method

Everyone's evaluation of a place is influenced by many subjective factors, such as proximity, familiar flavors, or the novelty of a first-time experience.

Thus, not all places can be accurately rated with a simple 1-5 score.

The charm of emojis lies in transforming textual communication into visual communication, serving both language and emotion. This evaluation method allows a comprehensive view through radar charts and intuitively shows which dimension affects the overall experience.

Create Your Map with Emojis

For many creators, making a rich-content map seems tedious and complex.

Emojis, as a frequently used character language, can quickly convey rich feelings. Simply mark the place on the map and select an emoji that expresses your insights to create a map rich in emotions and experiences.

You can also link places marked with emojis into routes, adding more meaning to each unique map.

If you want to personalize place marks further, you can customize icons, upload photos, and make the marks more suitable for your map application scenarios.