The Challenge
The Aboriginal people of Australia are the oldest living culture on earth with a history tracing back 60,000 years. But they are continually underrepresented within Australia. Not only is Australia the only former colonial country without a treaty with its Indigenous peoples, but up until 1967, the Australian government classified Aboriginals as "flora and fauna". The Australian Aboriginal flag is a universal symbol of Aboriginal strength and resilience, representing Aboriginal people and their ongoing spiritual connection to the land. The flag can be seen raised during major cultural events, protests, marches, and at every government institution and building alongside the Australian flag. It is recognised as an official flag of Australia. However, whilst 268 flag emojis are available in Australia, 1 flag isn't — The Australian Aboriginal flag. SBS News shared The Aboriginal community's sentiment, saying, "it continues to demonstrate the under-representation of Aboriginal People." So, in 2019, we asked Unicode to create an emoji representing the oldest living culture on earth. They rejected our petition to make it. We asked again in 2024. They said, "If we added a flag for them, it would highlight the lack of flags for others".
The Solution
On June 10, 2024, Apple announced the production of Genmoji—an AI-powered native iPhone feature allowing users to create custom emojis for the first time without Unicode’s approval. During developer testing prior to the public launch, we bypassed Apple Genmoji's ban on the word "flag". Through careful prompt engineering and machine learning, we iterated and tested every language variation to describe the appearance of the Australian Aboriginal flag emoji until we created the perfect Aboriginal flag emoji for every iPhone user. On December 12 2024, Apple launched Genmoji in Australia, allowing Apple users to create custom emojis using AI. We were ready. Aboriginal Influencers and news outlets shared emojis, prompts, and instructions on creating it directly to their communities across social media. Solid Lines artists created and shared unique artworks representing their connection with the flag using the new emoji and prompt. We responded directly to 1000s of posts calling for the emoji. Billboards across Australia further amplified the message. By December 13, our emoji and prompt were shared to over 21 million people, more than 3/4 of the Australian population. Generating enough media attention for Google Gemini to automatically share our Genmoji prompt with anyone googling “the Aboriginal flag emoji”. The Forbidden Flagmoji inspired a global response—minority communities worldwide requested their own flag emojis across Facebook and Instagram. Solid Lines extended the campaign by creating and sharing over 63 flags to digitally represent more than 250 million people.
