LAS VEGAS – Emoji, a sort of graphical shorthand for emotions, are staples of digital communication. They are pervasive in modern culture: on blogs, forums, social networks, email and occasionally in lighthearted news features. J

On Thursday, a company that saw its genesis in the adult entertainment industry released a brand-new set of emoji reconstructed from the ground up to give renewed vigor to the aging, flat-style “smiley faces.”

“Emoji have quickly found their way into our hearts through mobile messaging,” said Rick Muenyong, founder of both Emoji One and its parent company, Ranks.com. “It’s about time a solution was developed to align these standards for web use.

Inspired by flat design but engineered for modern communication, the entire Emoji One collection is open source and free for end-users. All pictographs are bound to a Creative Commons Share-Alike License, the most common type of free culture license for artistic projects. They are completely legal for use with personal or commercial websites, blogs, forums, apps and plug-ins, to name a few.

“We never intended to be that company, but we are proud to have been able to help put this together,” he continued. “The passion and love we put into the designs makes us that much more excited to pass them along to others. We hope you incorporate and love them as though they’re your own.”

Muenyong said the EmojiOne concept grew from a need the Ranks.com team perceived while developing MyPorn.com. The concept for EmojiOne emerged in May, and development began immediately.

“We realized open emoji support for websites was either limited or non-existent,” he said. “No clear licensing options are available for Apple’s iconic set. Large corporations like Twitter and Facebook have designed their own custom emoji, but they appear to be keeping them closely guarded, as well.

“The beauty of the Emoji One collection is that they’ll never be truly finished,” he continued. “We’re committed to future enhancements based on feedback and requests. A true adventure follows a path that never ends.”

The set available at EmojiOne.com includes 722 pictograms conforming to Unicode 6.0 standards. Another 250 emoji are in development to be fully Unicode 7.0 compliant by year’s end. All support both standard web :shortcodes: and Unicode character mapping, and several integration options are available via Github and SDelivr.

A cheat sheet is available at Emoji.codes.

“I’m anxious to see how the world reacts to the art,” Muenyong said. “This is unlike anything we’ve ever produced. To see [the Emoji One emoji] ‘in the wild’ will be a very surreal moment.”