The Unicode Consortium was founded in 1991.
The Unicode Consortium is the nonprofit organization that coordinates the Unicode Standard, allowing text and symbols to be represented consistently across computer systems. Its work eventually provided the framework used to encode emoji, but the consortium was not created specifically for emoji. The organization’s broader mission covers writing systems, punctuation, symbols, and many other characters.
Emoji became a major public-facing part of Unicode much later, especially after mobile platforms adopted standardized emoji characters and sequences. The consortium defines the underlying encoding and technical properties; companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung create the artwork used in their products. This distinction explains why the same emoji can look different while remaining interoperable across platforms.