Designer Vanita Brown looks at the final version of one of the Afro hair emojis at the Concorde Youth Club in Hackney, east London, England, Oct. 21, 2024. Catarina Demony/REUTERS

There are almost 4,000 emojis to help people express themselves online, but a group of young design students in London says none of them feature Black or mixed-race hairstyles, and they're determined to change that.

"As a Black creative and someone who's constantly changing their hair, this campaign is really personal to me," said Olivia Mushigo, senior creative on the Rise.365 team.

The London youth group is determined to break down beauty stereotypes with the first ever emojis featuring afros, braids, cornrows and locs.

"I feel like there's a negative stereotype around coarser hair textures, among like, Afro hair," project designer Jayzik Duckoo said.

Team member Chavez agreed, adding that, "especially in a school environment, things like people wanting to touch your hair, talk about your hair — it will make you feel like you don't belong."

The students started sketching styles — revealing how they'd like to be seen in the digital space to tackle "texturism," a form of discrimination that perceives afro hair as unprofessional, unattractive or unclean.

"There were so many different designs, it was so hard to just narrow it down to just four," said Mushigo, "because Black and mixed-race hair is so diverse."

Difficult work, but Duckoo said the creative process — designing the emojis, "was really fun… it was nice to see how it came out."

Emojis were first created in Japan in the 1990s. The advent of smart phones and the increased use of text messaging led to a global surge in their use over the last two decades, and this isn't the first time there's been a push to make emojis more inclusive. In 2015, Apple created 300 new emojis, some highlighting different races and professions, in response to a backlash from consumers.

The London team's four new emoji designs will be submitted in April to Unicode, the California-based organization that approves or rejects all new emojis.

"There's a lot of history behind our hair," said Joyclen Brodie-Mends Buffong, the founder of the Rise.365 community interest company behind the project. "We take a lot of time to do our hair, so for us it's important to want to be seen in a positive light."

Rise.365 has asked others to help promote their cause by searching "Afro hair emoji" on social media and search engines, to boost data around the query, which will help their bid when they submit their proposed emojis in the spring.

For now, they can only wait, and hope their creative and inclusive emojis will make the cut.

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