(CNN) — When Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji in 1999, he had to work within a grid measuring 12 by 12 pixels. That's a total of 144 dots, or 18 bytes of data, meaning that the Japanese ...

Most of our communication online is typed – emails, text messages, Facebook and Twitter. But typing has no facial expressions, no tone of voice. No nuance. So, maybe it was inevitable that somebody ...

Can you imagine a world where you text without emojis? Here’s how it all started. Japanese characters, or "kanji," are largely based on Chinese ideograms, whose writing system is already highly ...

Emojis have become, without a doubt, a design classic. But how effective are they as a communication tool? We ask emoji inventor Shigetaka Kurita.