Designers Tell the Story of Mexico City with Emojis Rachel Dovey - Next City
go to original August 2, 2017

One of the emojis from first-place winner Itzel Oropeza

City-specific emoji — from Beyoncé for Houston to the Times Square Elmo for New York — are on the rise in the U.S. Now, Mexico City is hopping on the textable symbol train with a host of Lucha Libre wrestlers, axolotls (i.e., Mexican salamanders), Frida Kahlos and axolotl Frida Kahlos.

Design by Eduardo Camacho Mayén and Pedro Rodrigo Grajeda Ortega

Those symbols, and many more, are the results of a contest held by the Laboratorio Para La Ciudad, the city’s office for civic innovation and urban creativity, and organized by emoji expert (and Next City contributor) Zoe Mendelson. The contest was announced in June with the tagline “How to Capture a City in 20 Symbols,” and the names of winners were released today. Originally, it was stated that the winning pack would be turned into a free app, but the city has now decided to include the designs of the first-, second- and third-place winners, along with several honorable mentions and picks from Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera.

As Fast Company wrote when the contest was announced, the lab “opted to keep the design brief relatively open,” asking designers to simply create emoji that represented Mexico City. Judges included Emoji Dick author Fred Benenson, journalist and creator of the Dumpling Emoji Jenny 8 Lee, and designers Federico Jordan and Oscar Estrada and Keziah, among others.

“Emojis have become an aesthetic, a playful way of communicating,” Gabriella Gómez-Mont, founder and director of Laboratorio para la Ciudad told Fast Company. “We’re very intrigued with the relationship between a person and a megalopolis, how people actually relate to it, and what emotional and visual responses [we will] get.”

...The top three winning teams are: Itzel Oropeza Castillo, Eduardo Camacho Mayén and Pedro Rodrigo Grajeda Ortega, and Ivonne Andrea Torres and Martin Robert Cook. See more of the finalists and their designs on the lab’s Twitter.

Read the rest at Next City

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