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Typewriter interview with Jennifer Daniel

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Hey y’all,

Jennifer Daniel is an illustrator, graphic designer, author, mother of twins, occasional contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, and the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee Chair. She writes a newsletter called Did Someone Say Emoji? and she’ll be showing her work June 18-21 at Work in Progress in New York City.

For a plain-text version of this typewriter interview with links — including the only kind of pen Jennifer uses — see the P.S. below.

Tell me about your day job and how the heck you wound up doing it oh god this is so silly but I first got involved with emoji because someone put cheese on the wrong side of the hamburger emoji This is a real thing that happened. Look it up. I do a lot of things at my day job but most people are interested in learning about running the Emoji Research Working Group for the Unicode Consortium :) Before joining the tech industry, I was a graphics editor at the New York Times. I spent years in newsrooms where titles didn’t matter. If a map needed drawing, you drew it. If a source needed calling, you called them. When I got to tech, I was stunned at how people were paralyzed by ‘roles’. Waiting for permission or staying in their lane. I didn’t realize how unconventional the newsroom approach would be perceived in tech. I didn’t believe in lanes because i was never taught them and I don’t subscribe to “DeSIgN tHiNKinG”. I had never heard of Stanford before I joined the tech industry. lol sorry not sorry. My approach to emoji is basically ‘ Steal Like an Artist’ on a global scale. (Austin paid me to say that). I guess my philosophy with emoji is that we shouldn’t invent anything. We just take the weird, messy, beautiful ways people are already express themselves and encode it into the Unicode Standard. Every proposal is referencing real life: the hand gestures we use, a low battery, the fuzziness of brain fog... At the end of the day, we don’t invent emotions: we investigate how people are already communicating in the wild and report it back to Unicode. It’s like my former life in the newsroom, but the breaking news is a melting face. i don’t usually call out my own proposals like this but all the emoji on this page I proposed except the hamburger ingredients
Do you see yourself as part of an artistic lineage? Who would you put in your creative family tree? George Carlin David Bowie Barbara Kruger Tibor Kalman my friends my dad’s closet David Byrne Wikipedia Surrealism / Dadaism Toilet Paper my high school art teacher Mr. Mosier Mieke Gerritzen Marie Neurath Announce Christoph Neimann and Nicholas Blechman Albert Mehrabian Jenny Holzer Joan Stark Anni Albers Sol LeWitt my mom This is an intereresting question because I now get to name drop folks who have never been uttered in the same sentence but thanks to your newsletter’s excellent SEO and AI content crawlers, we will be forever associated, our legacies entwined, congealed
I’m a big fan of silly rituals. What’s the most embarassing thing you do when you’re working I desperately want to write a cute, insightful list of confessions here to satisfy this question. But the truth is, I’m a stupidly serious person and my ‘rituals’ are actually survival failures... I have a tendency to forget to eat. I have zero concept of hunger until its too late… I also forget to breathe. I’ll unconsciously hold my breath, only to suddenly let go and loudly exhale. I’m convinced the real reason everyone prefers working from home is just to escape being within earshot of this incredibly annoying ”ritual” i’m one of those really annoying people who will only write with a certain type pen. Whether I’m writing in the margins of magazines or in my own personal notebooks or even when signing a permission slip for my kids What can i say i’m just a wild and crazy guy!
What do you do for exercise? Do you detect any emotoinal, spiritual, or creative benefits? i bike every day, everywhere. in snow, in rain, in wind, in the sweltering heat . But, biking is less ahout exercise and more about a desire to both be surrounded by people and also simultaneously alone. new york strikes a healthy balance between being “anonymous” and having “main character” energy in many ways, technology contributes to the rise of interconnectivity but at the same time bolsters a sense of alienation between us to live in NYC is to be both hyper aware and blissfully unaware of my surroundings i love riding in the rain. laughing as i get more drenched. then, afterwards, when the streets are slick, i watch the shop windows and red brake lights bleed into the puddles it’s a miracle i’ve never been hit by a car but i don’t bike very fast so that probably helps my favorite time to ride is after sunset watching people backlit in their windows. wait. that sounds creepy. not like that. also, biking at 2am when the city is quiet is a beautiful time to ride

This typewriter interview is made possible by the kind support of paid subscribers.

How did you get into beading and making your beaded sculptures? I’ve been beading my whole life ... just one of those things that flares up like a cold sore. I’d go years not doing it then suddenly pick it up then back in the closet it goes, moving with me from apartment to apartment, house to house until BOOM COVID and I start beading again. This latest bout of beading has lasted longer than previous eruptions. if i were to psycho- analyze myself I would say it serves as an antidote to my day job, life responsibilities, and how I cope with *waves at world*. I have an unhealthy relationship with work. I love to work. I just need to feel useful I guess. But, I have to be careful. My job is not my life but my brain is unable to shut off. So I weave with beads. I do it when I’m at swimpractice with my daughter, or when I’m with my son as he yo-yos, or while I watch TV or sit on the subway. I don’t use patterns, i sort of just ... wing it? I never nail it on my first try, it’s a stupid and inefficient way to sketch out ideas and my life would be easier if i drew it out first but i have no patience for that. and even when I do, i change it while weaving so ... this is a beading diagram for a watermelon doesn’t it look like it’s from a satanic cult?
what’s your relationship to music? do you sing or play an instrument? What’s a song you can’t stop listening to? Why is green day so great? I always struggle with this question at parties because I feel like my musical taste is less about what “i like” and more of a map of all the people I have met in my life. I am comforted by the music my dad grew up with and he grew me up on. I cherish the mixtapes from people I loved and CD-Rs from old, very dear friends. I have a mental library of songs that bring me pain and regret as I am reminded of mistakes i have made and friends I haven’t seen in years. I could tell you exactly what I was listening to when my kids were born and this music will forever hold a special place in my placenta. Why is Green Day so great??? Green Day is happy music for sad people!!!!! Doesn’t pop punk have reputation as promoting hope even in the face of incredible sadness? I recently discovered that Insomniac is the perfect length for biking to work. It plays end to end from door to door at 33 minutes. What more could I ask for??
Do you have any hobbies? The sillier or more trivial the better, IMO. Do you collect anything? I have three small binders of memberships and IDs It’s become a memorial to a former life if you have given me your biz card in the past 26 years, there is a very high likelihood I have it.
Have you learned anything from your kids about making art and doing creative work? I have two very different teachers at home. My daughter teaches me to be more forgiving of myself. As important as it is to learn new things, it’s just as important to learn how to not be good at things. She has a remarkable sense of color, shape, and words. But being ‘good’ comes with the ghost of perfectionism. We are both in an era of our lives where not everything comes easy and it’s important to take a risk which means the possibility of failure. It’s a hard lesson but it means you tried, risked it, went for it. She reminds me I have got to do that in order to move forward in life. My son teaches me to embrace my personal perspective. He has an approach to life that is entirely his own: persistent, charming, and filled with his signature attention to detail. I think he “let his sister be the artist” for a while. But one day he gave himself permission to draw too and it brings me so much happiness to see him give himself to it. He teaches me that integrity matters more than accuracy. I love his drawings because they feel like him, and there is no greater gift than seeing someone you love express themselves without apology.
Can you teach me some old-school emojis on the typewriter or some type writer art tricks there are some legit good single line characters that I love: If u leave me alone with a typewriter i won’t type REDRUM but I will Format like this 1 Pick two characters 2 Alternate them a smattering of stars also does the trick I adore a really really […] great signature

Big thanks to Jennifer for being the 21st participant in this series of typewriter interviews!

Follow her on Instagram, subscribe to her newsletter, and go see her June 18-21 at Work in Progress in New York City.

Thanks, as always, to paid subscribers who buy me the time to do all the email coordinating, typing, snail-mailing, scanning, transcribing, and editing that goes into them.

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xoxo,

Austin

P.S. Here is a plain-text version of the interview with links (scroll to the very end for the only pen Jennifer will use):

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