Icons : Simple But Significant
Icons are simple images that convey an important and explicit message. According to Peirce’s theory, they can be :
- symbolic : chosen arbitrarily, their meaning has to be learnt.
- iconic : they resemble the actual object that they represent.
- indexical : they possess some qualities of their signified object but their meaning still has to be learnt.
Icons can be very powerful because they tend to be universal. Even if their meaning has to be learnt — meaning that their meaning cannot be guessed if we see them for the first time — they usually are easy to remember once we’ve made the association. Plus, thanks to their minimalistic design, they are easy to spot and identify wether they are scaled up or down. They can be placed at the exact moment and location where the message needs to be addressed.
Let’s take a look at some icons that are commonly seen in our cities :
Symbolic and Iconic Icons
This one was seen on the entrance door of a building. Right when you need it. The crossed circle meaning that something is forbidden has to be learnt, but it’s really easy to remember. The cigarette is an illustration. It is both symbolic and iconic.
The diamond shapes that indicates a warming is also iconic but again, the illustration is pretty straightforward.
In France, pedestrian crosswalks look different, and so do their sign. By convention, warning signs are triangular. Their location is also critical : in urban areas, they are always located 50 meters before the actual crosswalk, whereas in rural areas, where cars are moving faster, they must be placed 150 meters before.
Here is another comparison between an american and a french road sign :
Those also are both symbolic and iconic. I say iconic but obviously there is still some learning involved : my husband who grew up in Florida has never seen this sign and cannot say if it means “turns ahead” or “slippery road”. As far as I am concerned, I grew up seeing a lot of those triangular slippery road signs and always saw … a chair.
This road sign uses digit — which are highly symbolic — and a stylized representation of Florida.
The arrow is one of western culture’s most used symbols. To learn more about the Arrow’s history from cave drawings to graphic user interfaces, I recommend this article by uxmatters.com .
Now this one is probably more difficult. I’ll give you three guesses :
It is not Trip Advisor’s logo.
It does not warn about the presence of owls.
It means : Neighborhood watch area — to be fair, it was written next to it. I would say that it is a symbolic icon, even if it hasn’t been chosen completely arbitrarily — owls are on the watch at night.
Indexical icons
We’ve seen a lot of iconic and symbolic icons. Whereas digits are, as far as I know, symbolic, alphabets are often pictograms who slowly evolved into indexical icons and eventually symbols. Here is an example of the evolution of the three first letters of our alphabet, invented by the Phoenicians :
The first letter (Alef / Alif / Alpha / A) was the first sound in the word meaning “beef”. Its pictogram represented a Beef Head.
The second letter (Beth/ Beit / Beta / B) was the first sound in the word meaning “house”.
The third letter ( Gimel / Jiim / Gamma / C, G) was the first sound in the word meaning “Camel”.
Conclusion
When used appropriately, icons can be very strong visual elements. They combine the two qualities that every idea should strive to have, according to Don Draper : simple but significant.
