Why I fought to get my bubble tea emoji accepted

Available for over a year

Bubble tea is massively popular in communities around the world, so designer Yiying Lu was surprised when her design for an emoji of the drink was turned down by the Unicode Consortium who approve all new emojis. Yiying explains how help in getting approval for this came from an unlikely source - and why she decided to help improve the approvals system. Photo: Emoji designer Yiying Lu with her boba tea emoji Credit: Colin Price