Halifax emojis make their way to the App Store

A local app developer has created a way for you to communicate with your friends in donair form.

MindSea Developments has launched a sticker pack featuring Halifax specific emojis. The company created Halimoji after Apple released stickers as part of the iOS10 update.

There are 43 Halicamojis to choose from in the 99-cent pack. Of these, 22 are popular street signs and five are animated. These stickers, which include a donair, Theodore Tugboat and Peggy’s Cove can only be used through iMessage by users with an iPhone and iPad that has iOS10.

“We essentially wanted to make something that would show off what was great in our city,” said Denholm Fraser who does quality assurance for MindSea. “So we whipped up some drawings and put it all together.

Nolan Waite, a developer at MindSea, says creating sticker packs is a pretty simple process. Apple has a free app called X Code for building packs such as this one.

“I just took the images that were drawn and brought them into an X Code project,” said Waite. “Then, you send it to Apple for review for usually a couple days. If Apple is happy with it, you’re good to go.”

The whole process took about three weeks to complete. Creating the illustrations and GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) were the most time-consuming aspects of the project.

“Everyone in the office was pretty excited about it, so it happened fairly quickly,” said Fraser.

Deciding on which images to use was difficult, so the team discussed ideas through group chat and in the office before deciding on the final list.

“There were quite a few ideas being tossed around but I guess we just went for the core, Halifax things,” said Fraser. “I think we do still have a large backlogged list of things and, maybe, we’ll put out an update and add them in later.”

Fraser doesn’t normally send emojis, but he makes an exception for this sticker pack.

“I feel connected to it because it’s where I grew up and I’m pretty passionate about the local community,” he said. “This is a way to show off and be proud of Halifax.”