Title: History Of Icons
Context: Iconography: 40 years later and we’re right back where we started.
Synopsis: Of all the GUI’s contributions to the canon of design, none is so significant, and fraught with passionate debate as the lowly icon. What once, in pre-PC days, existed solely as an instrument for way finding systems and machinery control dashboards eventually became the lingua franca of the human/computer interface. Icons evolved into the signifier for everything that we could—or hoped—to do with, on, and to our computer systems, no matter how abstract the concept was. Constrained squares of finite pixels used to convey ideas that would take several minutes to verbally explain is a tough ask. But that never stopped anyone from trying. And we continue to try to this day. Pixelated, rendered, phtoto-realistic, flat; we’ve seen, and tried, them all. Maybe one day soon, we’ll even manage to make them work(?)
Best Bit: “Sometimes it’s hard to see what they really mean, too… We shouldn’t be too harsh though. Beginnings are often bumpy.”
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