Dead technologies live on in symbols. Get used to it! Seriously, here in Australia I see pictograms of a castle keep to signify to tourists a historic site - our country is not old enough to have real castles, but this european symbol tells international travelers that something of historic interest is ahead. Or how about the steam train icon before a level crossing. People know they aren't likely to see an actual train - it is just that the icon is recognisable to the majority of the general public. Final icon was one that perplexed me on my first to europe - the constant use of a round horn to signify postal services. As an Australian I had no concept of why that symbol was associated with the mail, but traveling from country to country with only english and bad italian as my methods of communication, it was comforting to know I could find a post office anywhere I went - I just needed to spot the symbol.
I used to teach graphic design and one of the early projects put to my students was to remove all of the text labels, such as "telephone", "fax", "e-mail", "mobile" etc. in front of the contact details on a common business card and replace them with appropriate symbols. One thing I noticed was it was very hard for first year students to drag themselves away from the envelope as a component of the e-mail icon, even though these students live in the electronic world and send far more e-mails than postal letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40180 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
