POSTECH marks its 40th anniversary this year. The university is carrying out various projects to celebrate the occasion and look back on its history. Rather than making the anniversary a one-time event, POSTECH has found ways to bring it into daily life.

One of these projects is a PONIX brand emoji for everyday use on KakaoTalk. “Baby Ponix’s Punny Life” features POSTECH’s official mascot, PONIX. The Mueunjae Student Council proposed the project. The designs include symbols from different departments, reflecting the academic paths of Postechians. BAE Jun-yeong, president of the 8th Mueunjae Student Council, said he hoped students would enjoy using it in everyday conversations and remember the anniversary through the emoji. However, creating the emoji involved a practical challenge. Because the emoji serves as a form of school promotion, it had to be released as a brand emoji. Brand emojis require a large minimum order, making it difficult for the student council to cover the cost on its own. Bae said the student council discussed the issue closely with the External Relations and Communications Team. The team understood the purpose of the project and actively supported it, which allowed the emoji to be released successfully. The project took about a year from the first idea to the final product. On Sept. 7. the emoji was provided to both undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. Users should pay attention to the expiration rule; the emoji expires on a fixed date regardless of when it is registered. To use it for the full 30 days, users must register it by Nov. 7.

The anniversary message also appears in the campus phone ringback tone. The Information and Communication Team produced it using AI-based text-to-speech (TTS). The team has used TTS for services such as call waiting messages and business-hour announcements, but this was its first use of AI-based TTS. Callers can hear the anniversary message while they wait for their calls to connect. This allows POSTECH to reach many people, including students, alumni, partner institutions, and visitors. CHAE Sung-gun, a member of the Information and Communication Team, said the goal was to use the short time before a call connects to share a message about POSTECH’s present and future. The team chose Make It Happen as the background music, expressing the anniversary’s message of creating the future through new challenges and change. Chae said he hoped the ringback tone would give people a simple way to learn about POSTECH’s history and achievements in their everyday lives. He also hoped it would help members feel closer to the university and introduce the anniversary to people outside the campus.

These projects also show how the anniversary can be incorporated into forms of communication that students and members of the university already use regularly. Rather than requiring people to participate in a separate anniversary event, the projects allow the anniversary message to reach them naturally through familiar platforms and services. The KakaoTalk emoji and phone ringback tone use different forms of communication, but both projects bring POSTECH’s 40th anniversary into everyday life. The emoji can appear in ordinary conversations, while the ringback tone can be heard during a routine phone call. It can become an opportunity to look back on the past 40 years and think about the next 40. By connecting the anniversary with familiar activities, POSTECH is making it a continuing part of campus life.