Ginger emoji designs revealed ahead of planned launch

They're expected to finally come out next year

Over 21,000 people signed a petition calling for the creation of red-haired emoji (Twitter/Jeremy Burge)

Designs for the much-requested ginger emoji have been revealed.

Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia, posted a series of sample images on Twitter, showing off what the final designs could look like.

He included pictures of famous redheads Jessica Chastain and Ed Sheeran alongside the emoji.

“Requests for representation of red hair in emoji have been ongoing, yet prove a challenge to address due to a number of competing implementation options,” reads a document Mr Burge linked to.

“This is a proposal to provide for the representation of a red head emoji, as well as naturally occurring hair colors, features, and styles.”

The document clarifies that the sample designs might not match the final designs, which are expected to come out next year.

Over 21,000 people signed a petition calling for the creation of red-haired emoji.

“Despite the recent racial and sexual 'diversification' of Apple's emoji to be released in the next iOS 8.3 update, there's still an important group of people missing from the emoji family of 300 new symbols,” it reads.

“Redheads. In all their glorious gingerness, they've been missed out. Again. If you say you're going to diversify, why not add a few red-haired emoji in the mix?

“Natural redheads may be rare at less than 2% of the world's population, but that is 138,000,000 iPhones waiting to happen.”

Burge also tweeted possible designs for white-haired, curly-haired, and bald emoji.