Every phone sold today includes an emoji keyboard, which makes it more universal than any other keyboard layout in history.

Behind the scenes of this simple-looking set of smileys is an array of meetings involving Apple, Google, Microsoft and other major tech companies. Why did we end up with so many trains, but we still don’t have a redhead emoji? And how many dinosaurs is too many?

Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia and member of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee shares what goes into an emoji approval, and what challenges lie ahead in the future of emoji.

Jeremy Burge

Founder – Emojipedia

Jeremy Burge is the founder of Emojipedia and current-day Chief Emoji Officer responsible for all emoji definitions on the site. Having overseen the growth of Emojipedia since 2013, it now serves five million users with over 200 million emoji definitions each year. Burge was included in the UK Tech 100 in 2016, and has appeared on networks such as BBC, CNN and TWiT.tv.