Gear Guide: Ford wants a truck emoji

There are more than 3,000 approved emoji icons, but somehow the almighty pickup truck has been overlooked.

Don’t worry, Ford aims to fix this, and in the most American way. The new emoji will, of course, look very much like a Ford.

Ford has been working behind the scenes with an ad agency for more than two years to make sure that a truck emoji happen.

The proposed design is an extended-cab pickup that looks like a cross between an F-150 and Ranger. Of course, it’s Ford Blue.

“Given the popularity of Ford trucks globally, there’s no one better than Ford to help bring an all-new pickup truck emoji to hardworking texters around the globe,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of automotive.

Unicode is a universal coding standard that allows all languages and characters to be understood and represented by computers. A part of Unicode is the adoption and release of new emojis.

People regularly submit new emojis for consideration, but they must meet some basic criteria for selection.

The main criteria are as follows: “a) will the image work at the small size at which emoji are commonly used, b) does the emoji add to what can be said using emoji or can the idea be expressed using existing emoji, c) is there substantial evidence that a large number of people will likely use this new emoji?”

Fingers crossed the pickup truck emoji finds its way to our phones around June 2020. The emoji overlords at the Unicode Consortium have accepted it for consideration but are still determining whether to give final approval to go live.

Stephen Regenold writes about outdoors gear at http://www.gearjunkie.com.