I’m a big fan of visual literacy. During my life as a designer I must have made hundreds of unique icons all built to describe complicated processes at a glance. My icons didn’t always translate to all markets, especially overseas markets. I remember getting all offended when I got the critique that my icon for ‘print’ that had been applied to some F-key wasn’t playing well in Spain. Well…after a few of those I started really diving in and paying attention to international symbology that seemed to work in every situation. There aren’t a lot of these. So much of our cultural visual literacy is built from local experiences and local contexts…and just like language and reading, we teach our kids how to read symbols as well.
I love traveling and running across a high level informational symbol that I can’t figure out.
Corinthian columns with roofs?
