Apple turns its Canadian homepage into an emoji-filled Raptors tribute

The world’s snootiest designers have come up with a tribute to Canada’s winningest basketball team using whirling emojis on white space that is absolutely fucking beautiful.

On Thursday, the Toronto Raptors scraped out a victory against basketball’s biggest villains/heroes the Golden State Warriors in what would be the last game of the NBA finals. Despite the Raptors’ star player being mostly goddamn useless in a butt-clenching fourth quarter, the win delivered Canada its first NBA championship, and many a happy Drake meme.

Johnny Ive’s crack design team apparently thought the victory was cause for celebration. On Friday morning, Apple’s Canadian homepage (apple.ca) greeted visitors with excellent use of negative space, and three well-chosen emoji — the Canadian flag, the basketball, and the dinosaur — moving like the tornado that was the Raptors’ path to victory. 

The emoji homepage tribute is fitting in its child-like joy and wonder, mirroring the feeling of many a Canadian youth this ‘morn, discovering the elation of an NBA triumph.

As the world’s most elite design squad, it’s nice to see the designers at Apple truly reveling in play, and making use of design elements we see in everyday life such as basketballs, flags, and dinosaurs. It’s perfectly ok that the dino is a T-Rex and not a Raptor… we’re not going for absolute fidelity here! And a good designer knows they’ve got to work with what they’ve got! Do YOU see a raptor emoji available in the keyboard? Didn’t think so.

Truly though, this wacky amateur shit is fun as hell, and that’s refreshing. Go Apple, Go Raptors.