This week the Dogs Trust launched its own emoji keyboard while the Barnardo's retail team started a fashion blog.

Dogs Trust emoji keyboard

This week the Dogs Trust launched a range of dog emojis - digital icons that use an image to express a thought - after noticing that the “there are still only a handful of dogs in the current emoji range”.

It has come up with 20 canine characters, which are all based on real dogs at its rehoming centres, having used data about the most popular breeds of dog to help decide which ones to feature.

Adrian Burder, chief executive of Dogs Trust, said: “As the UK’s largest welfare charity, we have a responsibility to ensure all are fairly treated, and represented, in both the digital and real world.

“While we fully support the recent updates to diversify the emoji keyboard, with nine million canines in family homes across the country, we also feel deserve that same representation. We see so many wonderfully different every day, we wanted to share this with the public.

“We’re delighted to launch Dogs Trust Emoji which will allow us to celebrate the wonderful variety of our UK population in a fun and creative way.”

Why we love it: regular readers may have noticed that Spy is a big fan of emojis and animals, and with good reason. By creating something fun and unique Dogs Trust was able to attract some positive national news coverage and raise awareness.

Barnardo’s fashion blog

Children’s charity Barnardo’s has launched a fashion blog, The-Thrift, which is “for hints, tips, news and reviews from the world of ethical shopping”.

It has used the WordPress platform to host the blog and is encouraging readers to use the search term #mybarnardosfind to share their purchases on Twitter and Instagram, some of which will be featured on the blog. Readers can also sign up to receive email updates when the blog is updated.

This week former Girls Aloud singer and Barnardo’s ambassador Nicola Roberts took part in a Q&A to share her fashion tips to launch the blog this week. And there has been a guest post and video from fashion blogger Sprinkle of Glitter.

Why we love it: by hosting the blog outside of the Barnardo’s website and not branding it too heavily with the charity’s logo, the blog has the same feel as many other fashion blogs out there.  And it gives the charity’s retail team a new way to communicate with existing and potential shoppers.