Shigetaka Kurita
Shigetaka Kurita is a Japanese interface designer and often cited for his early work with emoji sets. Many refer to him as the creator of the emoji, a claim clarified in recent years.
Kurita now works for Dwango Co. Ltd., a Japanese games company owned by Kadokawa Dwango Corporation.
In 1999, while he was working as a designer for mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo and their upcoming mobile system i-mode, Kurita designed a set of 176 emojis using grid of 12x12 pixels that eventually started a global trend in the use of pictograms to communicate ideas through text messages. This followed emoji support from Softbank in 1997, with Emojipedia noting that Kurita's set was "more plentiful, and more popular" than Softbank's.
To make the emojis, Kurita got inspiration from the manga and Chinese characters and street signs.
The Museum of Modern Art has added the original set of emoji to its collection.
