Emojis have become ubiquitous in digital communications, but their use in marketing campaigns hasn’t always been successful. Canvas8 spoke to Dr. Sara Kim, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, to learn how people interpret and react to brands that use these symbols.

The period emoji has finally arrived thanks to the efforts of Plan International UK, a non-profit children's rights organisation. People are calling for the destigmatisation of menstruation, with the recent extension of the worlds digital vocabulary marking a wider push for gender parity.

Despite there being 2,823 emojis in the Unicode Standard, the thirst for ways to express emotion digitally appears insatiable. Even more so now, with the creation of Emoji Builder, a tool allowing users to design their own emojis, complete with a randomising function.

From magazine covers to small screens, media producers are striving to meet public demand for a level of diversity that reflects reality – but are their efforts enough? Canvas8 spoke to eight Americans about whether they believe mainstream media fairly represents all parts of society.