I work for a large book publisher and more and more books (especially YA) include a lot of emoji. To the point that having to replace all emoji with art is a tedious process. For workflow efficiency and for accessibility issues, we utilize emoji fonts and convert them to outline, then color correct for print (grayscale or CMYK). That way we can support diverse emoji and preserve the unicode values so that characters are maintained as manuscripts go from Word to InDesign.

Right now, emoji fonts that support shading and skin tone/hair color options come in two flavors--OpenType SVG and OpenType COLR. Neither is supported by print PDF standards. OpenType COLR is not yet supported in Adobe software. We are limited to OpenType SVG, which we have to convert to outline to export to PDF (for print standards and for colorspace). We are further limited by the individual font behavior of convert to outline (for example, Noto Emoji Color SVG has horrible character fidelity when converted to outline).

Adobe's emoji font, EmojiOne Color, version 1.0000, only has emoji up to unicode 9.0, which was released in 2016. Any newer emoji are not available.

My requests:
--Update EmojiOne Color with new emoji releases and keep it up to date.
--Add support for OpenType COLR in Adobe software.
--(The Dream): Create an emoji font designed for print that:
+Has CMYK or Grayscale options (emoji fonts are web based and RGB [we would still need RGB for ebook], but putting this thought out there to not forget print)
+Has shading so that skin tones, hair options, etc. are possible.
+Uses emoji unicode
+Works in Adobe software, exports to PDF and embeds for print, is supported in EPUB.