Shigetaka Kurita
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Japanese artist who created the first emoji set — 176 12x12 pixel designs for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet service in 1999.
Shigetaka Kurita was a member of the team developing NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet service in the late 1990s. He created 176 emoji to help facilitate electronic communication, drawing inspiration from manga, kanji, and street signs.The original 176 emoji covered weather, traffic, technology, and basic emotions in a 12×12 pixel grid — far simpler than today's detailed designs. Kurita's original emoji set is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Though Kurita created the first set, emoji evolved through contributions from multiple Japanese carriers before Unicode standardization in 2010.