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Ricky Yurewitch UX Designer and creative technologist, New York
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Hi, I’m Ricky, a UX Designer on Google’s emoji team and a creative technologist.

I design how emoji look and behave in Gboard, Meet, Gmail, Chat and Android, and I build the tools and prototypes behind that work. I also teach at The Cooper Union.

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Ricky Yurewitch

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  Now

UX Designer (Contract), Google Emoji team, since 2022

Teaching

Adjunct Professor, The Cooper Union, since 2025

Based in

New York

By the numbers

5 Google products that build emoji from my specification Emoji Specification1B+ Android devices getting the 3D emoji by March 2027 Noto 3D Emoji150,000+ Emoji Kitchen combinations I brought to Google Search Emoji Kitchen in Search300+ → 1 taps to set every emoji’s skin tone in Gboard Global Emoji Skin Tone

Selected work

04
Noto 3D Emoji Art Direction·2026·Accessibility guidelines, internal tools, emoji team, AI pipeline

Google redrew its 4,000 emoji in 3D. The shading softens their edges, so at message size pale emoji lose their outline on white and dark emoji lose theirs on black.

13% → 50% of face edge pixels pass 3:1 on white, first round to launch

Emoji Mirror
Emoji Mirror Creative Coding·2026·Concept, code, installation, Made by Google 2026

Launch the Noto 3D emoji in person at Made by Google, an invite-only press event.

7.5M+ followers reached by story and Instagram posts from the event

Emoji Kitchen in Search
Emoji Kitchen in Search Product Design·2023·Design lead, Search × Emoji Kitchen

Emoji Kitchen lived only in Gboard on Android. iPhone and desktop users had no way to make a mashup.

150,000+ combinations, one search away

Recognition

Webby Awards honoree, twice NetArt and Weird, 2024

Emoji Specification
Emoji Specification Design Systems·2022-Present·UX designer, spec owner, emoji team

Gboard, Meet, Gmail, Chat and Android each made the same emoji decisions on their own.

5 Google products built from it, plus the Android picker library

Recognition
“The emoji don’t stay static like they do on Zoom.”Emma Roth, The Verge
“…an inclusive and unified emoji experience… without building emoji pickers from scratch.”Android Developers

Everything in the garden

32

Case studies12

 Noto 3D Emoji Google 2026 AccessibilityAI PipelineTools 13% → 50% of face edge pixels pass 3:1 on white, first round to launch Case study →
 Emoji Mirror Google 2026 WebGLCreative Coding 7.5M+ followers reached by story and Instagram posts from the event Case study →
 Global Emoji Skin Tone Google 2022 UX Design 90% fewer taps to set skin tones Anthem Awards finalist · Quoted by The Keyword, Google Case study →
 Emoji Specification Google 2022-Present UX DesignAccessibilityDesign Systems 5 Google products built from it, plus the Android picker library Case study →
 eating.computer The Cooper Union 2026 UX DesignProduct DesignBrandingWeb Development 3 surfaces: web app, site, iOS Case study →
 Skin Tone Emoji Redesign Google 2024 Accessibility 6 tones redrawn: five modifiers and yellow Case study →
 Emoji Kitchen in Search Google 2023 UX DesignProduct DesignPrototyping 150,000+ combinations, one search away Case study →
 Procedural Flowers Personal 2022 WebGLCreative Coding Nov 1 I spoke about it at MIT Case study →
 Rhoda Lubalin Fellowship The Cooper Union 2022 UX DesignBrandingWeb Development 1990 first fellowship in the archive Case study →
 Emoji Packer React 2026 PrototypingTools 1,855 emoji, each with a measured color Case study →
 3D Emoji Kitchen 3D 2026 AI PipelineTools 44 models in the gallery Case study →
 BasisEK WebGL 2025-2026 WebGLTools 147,442 combinations on screen at once Case study →

More projects09

 Autonomy Lab The Cooper Union 2022 UX DesignBrandingWeb Development 4 color schemes, one per part of the day Case study →
 Intra-Disciplinary Seminar (2021-2022) The Cooper Union 2021-2022 UX DesignBrandingWeb Development 24 lectures over two seasons Case study →
 End-of-year Show (2021) The Cooper Union 2021 UX DesignBrandingWeb Development 412 works online Case study →
 Emoji Kitchen Art Direction Art Direction 2024 A toolkit for expressive emoji remixing. →
 Kinetic & Generative Typography Kinetic typography 2026 WebGLTools Kinetic typography experiments, iterated daily. →
 Dither Branding 2022 BrandingCreative Coding Identity and generative graphics for a senior show. →
 Marionette Digital / Physical 2021 WebGL A web project that transforms any screen into the simulation of a body-tracking sculpture. The project's data is broadcast from web sockets for anyone to see. →
 End-of-year Show (2020) UX Design 2020 UX DesignBrandingWeb Development A public-facing summary of a year’s work. →
 d13g0.nyc Full Stack Development 2022 UX DesignWeb Development A client portfolio with a CMS built for it. →

Experiments and tools09

 Kaomoji Maker Generative 2023 UX DesignPrototyping What would it look like if we could create modular emoticons? →
 Sky Atlas Tool 2026 WebGLToolsCreative Coding Every photo of the sky it can find — hundreds of thousands of publicly-licensed images packed into supercompressed KTX2 atlases and shown all at once, through the same three-tier LOD as BasisEK. Nothing full-size is ever stored: the closest zoom streams each photo straight from its source. →
 Failed splats feel like paintings Art project 2026 Art 24 Gaussian splats trained from fan and official footage of three concerts: Porter Robinson b2b Ninajirachi at Chinese Laundry, Skrillex, Porter and Nina at Gas Works Park, and Anjunadeep Open Air. Where the cameras run out, they turn into brushstrokes. →
 Happenstance Map Art project 2022 Art Every word of Happenstance (466,549 English Words, 2022) on the print’s own banner, 847 justified lines of 3 pt Times, re-sorted three ways: as printed, by meaning (a language model plus WordNet definitions) and by letters (each word’s exact Levenshtein neighbours). Switch and every word flies to its new place; hover one for its definition and its nearest words both ways. →
 Prophecy (1 English word) Art project 2022 Art One word at a time, this piece cycles through hundreds of thousands of words in order of similarity → A fly brain, typing Experiment 2026 WebGLArt A simulated fruit fly brain steering itself through a typing test. Letters die in the optic lobe; the steering neurons still work. →
 Sand Printer Art project 2022 Art An idea for a machine that prints images using dyed sand. →
 The Center and the Periphery (Arc of Electricity) Art project 2022 Art A cube made of ultracal, with two wires and a controller connected that generate an arc of plasma. →
 Gemini Emoji Contrast Analyzer Google 2026 AI PipelineTools 13,000 audits →

Teaching02

 Interactive Design Concepts The Cooper Union 2025 A studio elective I teach at The Cooper Union School of Art, on AI, the browser and code. Students from all three of Cooper’s schools learn to make design, art and software with AI agents and LLMs, and pick up HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python and version control along the way. No technical background required. The class runs on eating.computer, which I designed and built. → MIT Media Lab Talk 2026 The atrium of the MIT Media Lab, on the third floor of its building by Fumihiko Maki: the screen wall with its speakers and spotlights, the blue and yellow stair, and the sculpture hanging from the trusses far overhead. I spoke at MIT about Procedural Flowers on November 1, 2026. →

About

I’m a UX designer on Google’s emoji team, where I’ve worked since 2022. I maintain the specification for how emoji behave across Gboard, Meet, Gmail, Chat and Android, art direct accessibility work on the Noto emoji set, and build internal tools and prototypes for the team.

I’ve worked in design and web development since 2018, first freelance and mostly for The Cooper Union, where I studied and now teach. I also make generative art.

More about me Resume
Google, Emoji team
UX Designer (Contract)
2022-Present
The Cooper Union
Adjunct Professor
2025-Present
Freelance
Design and web development
2018-2025
The Cooper Union
BFA
2018-2022
Henry Dropkin Award
The Cooper Union
Recognition

Let’s talk.

richardyurewitch@gmail.com LinkedIn Resume