Highball is an alcoholic drink consisting of whiskey and mixed with soda. It is very popular in Japan, and during my last trip to Tokyo I came up with the idea of making an illustration in an Apple emoji fashion.

Keeping this highball emoji consistent with the rest of the emoji family is a challenge; other than the ice and a slice of lemon, there are no real unique characteristics. Here's a quick side-by-side comparison with emojis from the same family:

Details

Apple emoji are well known for subtle and juicy details and I wanted to include some of them in this design. I put special attention to the lights and shadows of the ice, and some tiny reflections in the glass.

I prepared a small layout in Sketch where I could test the emoji in different sizes while I was designing it. For some parts, like the lemon, I decided to create a symbol and edit it on its own – this way I could focus on the details of that part of the emoji alone.

Breaking it into symbols helped me deal with all the complexity that I kept adding to the illustration.

Using the highball emoji

Designing the emoji is great, but using it is even better 👀 – I made a couple of tests of using this emoji in context – I imagined how I would use it in combination with other emojis.

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