Iconography In Our Daily Life
“Iconography is a visual language used to represent features, functionality, or content. Icons are meant to be simple, visual elements that are recognized and understood immediately.”
When we talk about icons, many of us might immediately think of a lot of great designs that we see in websites or a lot of other digital platforms. Since today a lot of concepts that icons are designed to convey have become conventional, minimalist design has become a trend. Windows 10 icons as above are able to deliver messages to most of the digital device users without any text.
However, icons exist everywhere in our daily life, but how much attention do we pay to them? How are icons are used to convey concepts or messages in a non-digital world? Without them, would everything still be the same? With these questions, I took my camera (cell phone here of course) and sketchbook with me to get close to the icons around me. This might look like an abnormal behavior, because usually we would not take pictures of the signs on the subway, the signs in a restaurant or even some devices that we use every day at home. However, this has been one of the most interesting experiences in my design journey. I found that a lot of common signs or icons that we probably see everyday are not being paid enough attention to because they have been a convention. These signs or icons are actually very important, without them, our way of taking in information would be different.
There are different types of iconography. “A pictogram is a symbol that conveys meaning through its resemblance to a physical object. An ideogram a graphical symbol that represent an idea or concept”. On the other hand, arbitrary icons present meanings by convention.
This is a group of alert signs that we usually see in NYC trains. These pictograms communicates instructions, coupled with ideogram which is the red circle that means “not allowed” here. The purpose of these icons is to cause the attention of passengers, that smoking, littering and radio playing are not allowed. The other ones with instructions in text also clarify that certain behaviors are not allowed. The designs of this series of signs are consistent.
This is a group of incident symbols that highlights the instructions in this case. These symbols are easy to read and understand. When I saw these instructions again, I tried to cover the symbols, and left only the text. I found that the attention would not be as strong as being with the symbols.
These are two icons that I found in a restaurant. They are used to distinguish Men’s Room and Ladies’ Room. I think the combination of a small circle and a triangle is very special. Basically the only difference of these two icons is the direction of the triangle. I’ve never thought about symbolizing the different gender in this way. Simple ideograms, but not misleading, I think they are very cool and interesting.
This is a bus stop sign that we would see in NYC. The icon is a pictogram that simply represents the image of a bus. I think the sign is effective as it’s clear and easy to understand. Interestingly, I found that the bus stop sign is different in many other cities.
For example,
This is the menu bar on the Honeywell fan that I have at home. I think the Power icon is conventional and used widely, so it doesn’t need that much explanation here. The other three icons could be ideograms that represent the concepts of what function the button serves. Thanks to the explanation by the ideograms on the top, these icons become comprehensible.
These are three icons that I found in a restaurant, they represent “gluten free”, “vegetarian”, and “vegan” respectively. Although the pictograms might not transcribe the meanings very effectively given without the text underneath. But I like the minimalist design with consistency.
After this walk-around journey, I learned that icon designs actually exist everywhere in our life but we certainly a lot of times neglect their existence. The reasons could be a lot of them are very common of serving a function or delivering a certain message, could also be a lot of them are good designs that they are not misleading its audience who can comprehend the concept immediately. However, we also learned that good design should always be consistent with its elements, and be able to convey the concept effectively. Learning to pay attention to these icons in our daily life would be a big bonus to our design and user experience study.
