While working at Google, I collaborated with my fellow designer, Ryan Germick, to create a consistant set of emoticons for Gmail. The project was initially going to be for the Japan market as a lot of users there tend to use "emoji" on their phones and in their email. We ended up making them available globally, much to the delight of many users.
Since we were getting into the emoticon game rather late as compared to other companies, we wanted to take a different approach. We designed these with a strict palette of Google colors, done in pixel by pixel style. Most of the emoticons on the first two rows, plus the crab, are my work, while the second row, plus the monkey and robot are the work of Ryan Germick.
Be sure to log into Gmail to see these lovely icons animated.
