Need to express your enduring love for Bernie Sanders and a particular emotion at the same time?
Now, there's an app for that. At a time when politics and pop culture seem to overlap more than ever — when Kanye West and Deez Nuts are both seen as presidential candidates with actual potential by many voters — is anyone really surprised that Bernie Sanders has been emoji-fied?
The Berniemoji app, which is free to download from the App Store, allows users to insert emoji modelled on the candidate’s face into digital messages. Feeling happy?
Tell your entire contact list by adding a cartoon image of a smiling Sanders, complete with flowing white hair and granny glasses, to an email or text. In a sour mood?
There’s a Berniemoji for that as well. The independent senator’s face is drawn atop a blue background when expressing more positive emotions, and red when he’s feeling more negative.
There are 12 Berniemoji in all, ranging from elated (which you can use while texting about a national $15 minimum wage) to outraged (which would be appropriate to including in a Tweet discussing Citizens United).
The designer of the emoji series, Scott Nash, told the New York Times he set out to create an image of Sanders that would become as iconic as the “Hope” portrait Shepard Fairey made for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Nash decided a set of emoji were the perfect vehicle to capture his subject when, “occurred to me that the key to Bernie, is he’s not iconic, he’s emotive.” And now, the candidate’s supporters can be as well.
