You may have heard of yuppies (young urban professionals), but if you aren't yet familiar with the concept of yuccies (young urban creatives), these emoji for city-dwelling creatives by Moving Brands will illuminate the phenomenon. Jim Bull, co-founder of the creative agency that created the emoji, is currently developing a platform to use and share them — and not a moment too soon. Wrote Bull on Medium:
Emoji sets are loved because they are fun and an instant way to communicate… so as creative-types living and working in London, New York, and San Francisco, what would we add to the existing set, what was missing to represent our lives? What emerged was a self-effacing look at the world of the city-dwelling creative.
What exactly is a "city-dwelling creative"? Bull told Bustle it's "a complex mix of caffeine, color, and kerning with a fist full of first world problems, an eye on design, and a 'for good' guilty conscience." The term "yuccie," which first arose from a Mashable article by self-identified yuccie David Infante, resembles Bull's characterization. Infante characterizes this modern (some might even say postmodern) creature as "a slice of Generation Y, borne of suburban comfort, indoctrinated with the transcendent power of education, and infected by the conviction that not only do we deserve to pursue our dreams; we should profit from them."
Oh, OK. So, basically, me. Got it.
Moving Brands's emoji also spoke to me as a 25-year-old New York writer who studied semiotics and likes bands you've never heard of but never really nailed the whole "hipster" style. Here are some problems that we city-dwelling creatives, young urban creatives, or whatever you want to call us, understand, as expressed in emoji language:
1. Getting So Engrossed In Our Own Thoughts Or Projects That No External Stimulus Elicits A Strong Reaction
All those manic smileys are way too emphatic for the yuccie's usual demeanor, so Moving Brands' emoji sport underwhelmed smirks instead. Bull calls these the "mild smile" and the "nonchalant and equally noncommittal shrug" — perfect for when someone tries to converse with you across a cafe table where you're trying to edit a video.
Speaking of which...
2. Intense Ambivalence Surrounding Coffee Orders
The yuccie's natural habitat is an indie cafe, and its natural diet consists of caffeine and gluten-free pastries. In this setting, we face an eternal debate between our thirst for coffee's finer varieties and our impulse to conserve money. While lattes and cappuccinos sometimes get the best of us, most yuccies settle on a less sophisticated coffee or tea for practicality's sake and make a habit out of this order to avoid constant decision-making.
3. Debating Whether We Want To Get A Pet Or Just Pet Everyone Else's Dogs On The Street
In many yuccies' minds, pets have replaced children as the ultimate symbol of adulthood. But do we really want to bother with all the walking, training, and feeding, not to mention hunting for a pet-friendly apartment? Most of us would rather just annoy the owners of cute dogs we pass on the street, pet store-dwelling cats, and observe the occasional pigeon or squirrel. Bull points out that Apple's current animal offerings "seem to be pulled from a nine-year-old's slumbersome dream. We want city animals — where is the pug, the frenchie, the grumpy cat? Where did you last see a ram on Broadway? Or a dragon on Folsom?" He has a point.
4. Picking Up The Perfect Ingredients At The Farmers' Market
While we're not the kind of people to splurge, we do like to support our local vendors and understand that some foods can actually be cheaper at farmers' markets than grocery stores. But that doesn't take away the struggle of selecting the perfect cheeses for our "small get-togethers" or finding an avocado at the perfect stage of ripeness.
5. Keeping Up With The Latest Technology
Though we are creative types, our liberal-arts education has taught us to be multifaceted, bridge divides, combine disciplines, and everything else we read on our schools' admissions manuals. We want to be the most high-tech designers, music producers, and bloggers out there. So, Bull wrote, the emoji for the modern urban-dwelling creatives do not contain the pagers and CDs of yesteryear. Instead, we've got self-driving cars, USBs, and other symbols that we're keeping up with the times.
Now, Moving Brands just needs to add these to our iPhones so we can take them to the farmers' market and express our struggles selecting avocados as we contemplate our latest digital art installations.
Images: Courtesy of Moving Brands
