Writing My Origin Story Into Every Device On Earth. Permanently.
I was sitting in my chair.
The same chair where I've written every book, every post, every story that matters for this chapter of my work.
The post I was working on was about my origin story, and the moment that changed everything. Christmas Eve 1998, a greengrocer's in Ramsgate, twenty-eight bags of Brussels sprouts, and the story that eventually got me my first job at Toshiba.
You probably know it by now.
But as I was writing… I wanted to express it visually. A single image alongside the words and something that captured everything, the origin, the meaning, the moment. So I reached for an emoji … and the closest thing that came up was a seedling 🌱
Not a Brussels sprout … because there isn't one. And for a second I felt… frustrated, genuinely, properly, frustrated. Something so central to who I am, to why I am doing what I am doing today, to everything I've built, and I couldn't represent it. In the global language of digital communication, my symbol doesn’t exist.
And then something happened.
I did what I always do when I hit a wall, I didn't accept it, and I looked for a way around it.
Why isn't there a Brussels sprout emoji?
Think about it for a second. Brussels sprouts are one of the most culturally recognised vegetables on earth. Beloved by many, divisive for others, known by absolutely everyone. They’re a fixture of Christmas dinner tables from London to Melbourne, and are the subject of annual debates, surveys, and passionate opinion pieces every December.
There's a broccoli emoji, a leafy green emoji, a herb emoji, a seedling emoji … but no Brussels sprout.
I started researching, and what I found gave me butterflies in my stomach.
There is a formal process for submitting a new emoji to the Unicode Consortium, the body that controls every emoji on every iPhone, every Android, every WhatsApp message, every platform on earth. The process is comprehensive, evidence-based, and demanding. The submission guidelines are written for businesses, agencies, and corporations. The kind of requirements that mean individuals almost never attempt it.
Which is exactly why I decided to.
And then I noticed something else. The submission window opens once a year, a short, specific period when new proposals can be received, and I was sitting right in the middle of it.
Fate, I thought.
But here's where it got bigger than an emoji.
I sat back in that chair and I started to think it through properly. If I could submit a proposal for a Brussels sprout emoji… and if it was approved… what would that actually mean?
A small, spherical, tightly-leaved brassica, compact, green, unmistakeable, permanently encoded into the global Unicode Standard. On every device, in every language, in the hands of every person on earth … forever.
And not just any symbol. My symbol, the visual representation of my origin story, my personal brand, and everything I believe about the power of storytelling, permanently woven into the fabric of global digital communication.
That's not a marketing campaign, that's a story. It would be the most complete, most permanent, most globally impactful story I could ever tell.
Wild horses couldn't stop me after that.
The work.
I want to be honest about what this actually took. This wasn't a wish, it wasn't a whim, it was a lot of work, research, and rigour, because the Unicode Consortium demands nothing less.
The proposal I submitted on 1st July 2026 includes:
Commissioned original illustrations: colour and black and white, at 72px and 18px — because you have to prove the form is visually distinctive at emoji scale
Google Search data across multiple naming conventions: "brussels sprout," "brussel sprout," "sprouts" — showing over 11.5 million results for the exact proposed name alone
Google Video Search data. Google Trends analysis. Google Books Ngram data stretching back to the year 1500
A full case made across all seven Unicode selection criteria: including why no existing emoji can adequately represent a Brussels sprout (broccoli is botanically distinct, leafy green is entirely the wrong shape, and no ZWJ sequence of existing emoji comes close)
Because if you're going to try to write your origin story into the permanent fabric of human communication… I had to pull on all my storytelling powers.
The Brussel sprout emoji design submitted to the Unicode Consortium.
The detail that makes this a story.
There's one more thing I haven't told you yet. A previous proposal for a Brussels sprout emoji was submitted in April 2021, by someone else. It was declined, and the Unicode resubmission window is four years.
I submitted on 1st July 2026, sitting in the middle of the first eligible submission period since the rejection. So, a storytelling expert, with a personal brand built on Brussels sprouts, and an origin story that starts with twenty-eight bags of them on Christmas Eve in 1998 … submitting a formal proposal to overturn a rejection and place that sprout permanently into the hands of every person on earth.
If that's not a story… then I don’t know what is.
Now we wait.
The Unicode Consortium will respond by 30th November 2026. I won't pretend that I'm not hoping, because of course I am, and with everything I have.
But here's what I know regardless of the outcome. I believe storytelling is a superpower, not a soft skill, not a nice-to-have … but a superpower.
And this, the research, the proposal, the audacity of the attempt … is me proving it.
Not telling you that stories change lives … but showing you.
Can a story from 1998 really change the world?
We'll find out together by 30th November 2026. 🌱
Stories. Change. Lives.
