What is emoji art?
Emoji art is a picture made by lining up emoji in rows, the way a cross-stitch pattern uses squares of thread. Each emoji is one pixel. The red heart here is 8 emoji across and 7 rows down, 56 emoji in all, and it reads as a heart the moment it lands in a chat.
Every picture on this page was drawn for it, first as a small grid of pixels and then filled in with emoji. The same drawings appear on our text art page as braille dots, in one colour, if you want something smaller.
Why is emoji art made of coloured squares?
Because squares tile. 🟥 🟧 🟨 🟩 🟦 🟪 and 🟫 fill their whole box, so a row of them joins into a solid shape with no gaps. A row of ❤️ has a little space around each heart, which is fine for a border but blurs a picture. A few pieces break the rule on purpose: the red heart on white hearts, the heart made of cherry blossoms, the candles on the cake and the sparkles around the moon.
Does emoji art look the same on every phone?
The shape does, the colours vary a little. Emoji are all drawn the same width, so a picture whose rows fit on the screen keeps its shape on iPhone, on Android and in WhatsApp. What changes is the style. Apple, Google and Samsung each draw their own emoji, and so does WhatsApp on Android, so the red is a slightly different red on each.
The one real failure is age. The coloured squares were added to emoji in version 12.0, in 2019. A phone that hasn't had an update since then shows empty boxes where the squares should be.
Why does my emoji art look broken after I paste it?
Usually a row wrapped, the picture was pasted after some text, or the chat is in dark mode. Each has a quick fix.
- A row wrapped. If a row is wider than the chat bubble, its last emoji drop to the next line and the picture shears. Most pieces here are 11 emoji wide or less, and only one is 13. The width is under each picture, so pick a narrower one for a small phone.
- It was pasted after some text. The first row then starts partway along the line. Send the picture as a message of its own.
- The chat is in dark mode. White background squares show up as bright boxes on a dark screen. The moon, the star and the ghost are drawn on black and look right in a dark chat.
Can you send emoji art as a text message?
Yes, but it takes more texts than it looks. Any emoji switches an SMS to Unicode, where one text holds 70 characters, and most emoji count as two. The red heart sends as 2 texts and the nine-row smiley as 3. The line under each picture gives its count, worked out the same way as our SMS character counter. Sent over WhatsApp, iMessage or RCS, none of this applies.
How do you make your own emoji art?
Draw it as a grid first, then type it row by row. It takes ten minutes for something heart-sized.
- Sketch it on squared paper. Keep it to about 9 squares across so it fits a phone screen, and fill whole squares, not halves.
- Pick a background square. ⬜ for light chats, ⬛ for dark ones. Every empty square in the grid becomes one of these.
- Type each row with the same count. Use background squares for the gaps, never spaces. A space is narrower than an emoji, so a row with spaces in it comes up short and the picture leans.
- Send it to yourself first. It's the only way to see it at the size your friend will.