MoijiLaLa Invites Miami Artists to Make Their Own Emojis

Chances are you haven't given much thought to the source of your favorite emojis. Every once in a while, a couple of new yellow-faced options or farm animals pop up, and you're mildly amused for a minute but unimpressed overall. Emojis rarely speak to you — unless, of course, you brought to life the wonderful Miami emojis New Times created last year. Those were dope.

But generally, emojis just don't matter. They are things your mom sends and you forget about.

Until now. A local company is making emojis great again (#MEGA) by monetizing artwork through original emojis and stickers created by Miami artists. With the click of a download button, you can help support a struggling artist and at the same time send the hottest fire emojis this side of Hialeah.

The people behind this ingenious idea call themselves MojiLaLa. Their company targets artists who sick and tired of having nowhere to display their art and are looking to make a buck off their talent. Dana Loberg, CEO and cofounder of MojiLaLa, tells New Times the emoji game seemed broken, so her company set out to fix it.

"As a general consumer, the system feels broken when it comes to finding an emoji/sticker package, downloading the package, and then looking for the one emoji you want to send," Loberg says. "Then, having that permanent package there which you’ll likely never use again felt cumbersome. Plus, there’s also not a lot of diversity in the stickers; there was always something lacking from the options.

"Artists all over the internet were asking how they can get their stickers in Facebook, Line, or other chat apps. This was the 'aha' moment: when you see lots of artists asking the same question over and over and no real solution. We knew we had to build MojiLaLa. Our platform helps not only Miami artists, but artists all over the world. It brings them exposure, distribution, money, and allows artists to focus on what’s most important to them: their art."

According to Loberg, MojiLaLa has been a new and exciting way for Miami artists to cash in on their talent without all of the hassles that come with the traditional forms of showing off art. The MojiLaLa process is fairly easy: Artists deliver their work quickly and free of charge to iMessage users who crave fresh and unique emojis. In exchange, artists receive 50 percent of the profits of sales of their emojis. That's it.

"Some artists have never made a sticker package but learn about MojiLaLa and start to create and submit them to our platform," Loberg says. "We also encourage artists to create packages that are local to where they live, covering topics that are most interesting to them in order to bring more diversity and local/geo stickers to the platform."

Artists can join MojiLaLa by creating a profile and submitting their stickers at creator.mojilala.com. The company automatically generates an iMessage sticker pack and shows them data on how it's trending in the Apple Store. The artists decide the cost of the package, such as free, 99 cents, $1.99, etc.

Right now the most popular emoji packages are animated. In particular, an animated dinosaur is the favorite. If you think you can do better, sign up, create, and sell. You could be the one to give Kim Kardashian and her Kimojis a run for their money.