Demian Nájera, director de Arte Sénior Digital
Demian Nájera, Senior Digital Art Director at Zubi Advertising, was part of the team of creatives in the project Latino Emoji launched in 2015, and he explains that the initiative comprised by 267 emojis represents the authentic expression of Latino culture. Nájera says that this was a very fun and interesting project, because it focused not only on designing emojis, but they also did very deep research with representatives from several Latino countries: Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. “The part I enjoyed the most was synthesizing those ideas and expressions in vectorial images, like, for example: ¡No mames!, ¡A la chingada!, mala copa, ¡A huevo!, among many others.”The idea of Latino Emojis stems from an update Apple did of its emojis in the 9.1 version of iOS. On that ocassion, for the first time, a taco is included, but it doesn’t look like an original Mexican taco. The agency suggested developing entirely Latin American emojis, designed by Hispanics. The goal was for them to be colloquial and genuine, and to represent Latin culture in an authentic way, with all its expressions, popular sayings, and food. A year after the launch, the app already has more than 70 thousand downloads in 108 countries.
