Icons: Under Valued Visual Guidance
How icons guide us through everyday life without us even giving it a second thought.
Icons -- those intuitive instructional symbols -- are used constantly whether we notice them or not. If you ever said, “YES, I know what they are, they are logos”. You are right, but there are more icons in the world than just that.
The above images show examples of icons that are fairly common and easily found around most homes. The oven burner shows which one is being turned on with the bright red circle. The power buttons show on and off. How to toast the bread and timers are all different icons that we see every day. Icons help us each day, but do we as users truly notice them?
I would personally say no. My DesignLab course recently asked us to take pictures and find icons that are around us and analyze how they are utilized. It took me a moment and I really had to think, where are there icons in my house? To my surprise, after that initial thought, I realized they are everywhere! They are on my tea boxes, phone, and shampoo bottles, etc.
Only once I was tuned into looking for them did I see them. My humidifier, vacuum, and heater all have on and off power buttons. All of the power button icons are similar but with slightly different visual nuances, although they mean the same thing. Just as Hannah Alvarez noted, some icons are frequently used, but each can have slightly different functions. The same can be said that an icon can have the same function but have slightly different designs.
This is where there are “artistic freedoms” employed. The way that some icons are created to have softer lines, to be very simple or very complex with many details, these are also ways that can communicate a brand feel or just communicate information in general to the user.
Today, icons are employed so commonly and have become such intuitive messengers that they have become essential guides to our daily lives. The average person rarely realizes that his or her life is now enabled by helpful little icons every day that silently guide them with tasks and create a sense of order in an otherwise chaotic universe.
