Finland strengthens its country branding with six new summer emojis

Finland emojis has introduced six new emojis, including Åland flag and swan the national bird, into its collection.The six new emojis are designed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland together with art director Bruno Leo Ribeiro. They feature Åland flag, Nordic cooperation, the call of summer Nordic colours, Finland's national bird - the swan, association and education, all which are important culture or characteristics of the Finns.[gallery link="file" ids="179991,179992,179993,179994,179995,179996" orderby="rand"]This final update means Finland will now has 62 national emojis in total.Debuted in December 2015, Finland emojis are the world's first national emojis to be introduced by a country - Finland, as part of its branding initiative.Available for free download in the Finland emojis app in Google Play and the app store, as well as finland.fi/emoji and the Finland Toolbox , two of its emojis - Sauna and Wolly socks - have been approved by the Unicode Consortium for inclusion in the Unicode Standard, and will appear in the emoji keyboards of all devices as soon as device manufacturers and app developers update their own emoji collections by the end of summer 2017.[gallery columns="2" link="file" ids="179998,179999"]Petra Theman, director for public diplomacy at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, said Finland emojis were initially released with the wish to convey that Finland is not only functional but also fun, as well as digitally savvy.However, the ministry had then been "overwhelmed by the amount of awards, suggestions for cooperation, including commercial use of the emojis, and by all the ideas sent to us", Theman said.The Finland emoji collection has met with great success abroad, garnering numerous international awards and reaching approximately 240 million people through traditional and social media.