This week we covered Icon Design.
A pictogram is a visual translation of a concept. It is a sign : a combination of shapes associated to carry meaning.” - Symbol and signs
As we looked at last week, Icon design goes really far back, as far as cave painting which were carved into the stone up to 65,000 years ago. Not only did they carve it into the stone, they painted animals, hunters and handprints on the walls using their fingers, twigs and horsehair brushes or blew it onto the wall using tubes made out of bones.
A more modern set of icons which are international known are the Olympic games icons or better known as the Olympic pictograms. Introduced for the first time in 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics. They were designed to break down the language barriers of the world by using multilingual and cultural icons. From then on each Olympics the pictograms were styled slightly different with different designers for each games too. The slight tweaks to the style are done to reflect the host city and countries culture and aesthetic.
Tokyo 1964 Pictograms
Paris 2024 Pictograms
The Olympic pictograms are a true representation of how some icons can be timeless and can be altered slightly to fit with the style and the feel of the games and cultures. Another example of this is the floppy disk drive icon. To this day it is still the save symbol despite children and young people of this not even knowing what a floppy disk is.
Icons are universal and everyone knows what they mean no matter where in the world they live. They can even be adapted slightly and changed and no meaning to them is lost. Popular and most well known examples of these are the man, woman and disabled icons found on toilets and parking spaces. Other examples of these are the icon for a coffee cup, there is so many different styles of the icon but they all have the same universal meaning behind them
A group of icons all have a similar style and brand look. Examples of this include the likes of apple, although all the app icons are for different apps, they all maintain the same look and style. All icons show the apps purpose and functionality through it, such as Instagram which is the icon of a camera as that is how it started out.
When you think of icons, you don’t think there is that many but once you start actively looking there is tons of them:
A typical rule of thumb for good navigation is to label your icons especially if it is a navigation bar as it makes it easier to identify what the function of each icon is the icon is not universally recognised. A great example of this is the apple website. It is amazing how they can make each icon look slightly different, even when it comes to each MacBook and iPhone!!
