December 2017

Taiwan is an island full of delicious food, beautiful landscapes, friendly people, and unique culture. It is a pity that these Taiwanese experience has not yet been well discussed around the world. Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to inspire people to talk about Taiwan more. Therefore, I co-founded the Taiwan Emoji Project—a project that promotes, explores, and translates Taiwanese experience into the universal pictorial language of emoji. So far, my team deliberately selected 24 motifs from Taiwanese culture, food, and architecture and turned them into emojis. To name a few, Taiwanese Night Market, Bopomofo, Taipei 101 skyscraper, Xiaolongbao, Bubble Tea, etc.

We released these emojis on major social media platforms in Taiwan for free and built a project website that introduces each emoji and provides the source image files for people to download under a creative commons. Immediately following the launch, the project sparked massive conversations on the internet and garnered solid earned-media placements in national top-tier media including TVBS, Yahoo News, Apple Daily, etc. People love the concept and the design of these emojis and eagerly use them to share their Taiwanese experience. As a result, the project successfully inspired more people to learn about Taiwan without the language barrier. The project has been awarded the gold medal at the Young Lions Competition Taiwan in 2018.