Zubi Advertising, a Hispanic Marketing agency composed of Hispanic employees based in Miami, USA, releases Latino Emoji. A keyboard app with over 250 latino inspired emoji stickers.

Latino Emoji has people, food, sayings and popular culture emojis from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. For example, Colombia has a key emoji because the Spanish word for key, “llave” is Colombian for “dude!”. Puerto Rico has the coquí frog, Argentina an emoji of the current pope and Cuba has a mojito.

The set also includes graphic takes on common phrases used in some of our countries – such as a mango sitting on a rice bowl (“arroz con mango,” which means a total mess) or a head of lettuce with a face on it (“cara de lechuga” means someone is pretty shameless).

To make sure they really typified the culture Zubi picked designers from each country to design their country’s emojis.

“We realized there was a need for emojis to speak to the diversity of our community. Our food, our slang our cultures are different from one country to another. /—/ We tried to capture how Hispanics use a lot of expressions that have double meanings. Our slang is humorous and exaggerated. We’re dramatic and charming and passionate. We wanted to graphically capture that. /—/ At the end of the day it’s a form of communication. And if you don’t have a way of communicating that reflects how you truly speak, you’re being limited.”
Iván Calle, Executive Creative Director at Zubi to NBC News

The app is downloaded 10 000 times on launch day alone in over 100 countries.

*Latino Emoji were available to download from iTunes and Google Play but has since been discontinued and the website shut down.