Just like when my history teacher told us the origin of the word democracy when we talked about the ancient greek.
In a few decade, history teachers will display to young student some of those old physical artefact to show them the object of the ancient time that inspired the symbol in their software. They have become symbol of their own right, like democracy became a word and kratos and demos were forgotten. Now, young user associate directly those shape with some functionnality of the software, not with the original object.
COOL ICONS FOR WORD SOFTWARE
But in 2012, the familarity is with other software that use those icon. Why? Because that metaphor was used to match a command with a task that was familiar to the user before. I dont think there is a need to replace them, because unlike when they were introduced we don't need the metaphor anymore. Those icons formed a "visual language" that is used to communicate with the user. We associate it with a governement where a bunch of elected official go sit in a big room to vote laws. Today we still use use the word democracy, but except for a few scholar, no one really associate it with demos and kratos. The greek of Athens used those two word to describe what their city used, and it morphed into a new word to describe that very specific form of governement.
For example : democracy, from the greek demos (people) and kratos(rule, power). Most words we use today come from ancient terminology that have since long evolved from their original meaning. You know what this post make me think of? Etymologie. I found all these and haven't been able to attribute all of them. Note: If one of these icons is yours let me know and I'll link to your site. What other icons do we use while the original inspiration fades into obscurity? Last time I made a carbon copy I was using a mimeograph to do it. Instagram sold for $1B with an icon whose subtlety was lost on its target audience. No one under 30 has seen a Polaroid in years but we keep using them for icons. If you don't know who Johnny Carson is, how could you know that this is a old-style microphone? Want to indicate Settings or Setup to a twenty something? Show them a tool they've never used in their lives. We'll still put other arrows and icons on top of these icons to mean reply, forward, delete, and other things. Soon the envelope itself will go away and the next generation will wonder what this rectangle means and what it has to do with email. These two commands should have had their icons reversed! This makes no sense as magnifying glasses are for searching things that are near and binoculars imply breadth of search and distance. (What's that?)Īt some time in the past the magnifying glass became the "search everywhere" icon, but for some reason binoculars are for searching within a document. The world's most advanced phones include an icon that looks like a phone handset that you haven't touched in 20 years, unless you've used a pay phone recently. I suppose the kids use Pee Chees still these days? I use folders because I use the 43 Folders organizational system but I don't see any reason that we couldn't be storing our files in abstract squares rather than folders in the sky. No, you've never seen either of these before, young person. I suspect my voicemail is no longer stored on spooled magnetic tape. I assume that the Voicemail icon is supposed to be evocative of reel to reel tapes but it always look like a container of 110 Film. Everything was bound together with metal spiral loops. Sometimes we'd manage our calendar that way also. We would write down all our addresses and phone numbers in a dead tree and carry it around with us. No, books didn't "keep our place when we turned them off." We used to use smaller flat dead trees to keep our place in between the dead trees we would read from so that we didn't lose our page. Seriously, short of a doctor's office or the DMV when are we coming in contact with clipboards? And why is the clipboard the icon for Paste? Why not Copy? Or "fill out form? Why are they called Radio Buttons? Because my car radio used to have buttons where only one could be pressed at any time. Radio Buttons - Mutually Exclusive Choices Is it pointing to under my desk? What's a floppy? Why not a USB key? Maybe a cloud icon? That will be easy since there is only One Cloud Icon in the world. Adding the Arrow to the 3.5" floppy makes me smile. What happens when all the things we based our icons on don't exist anymore? Do they just become, ahem, iconic glyphs whose origins are shrouded in mystery? Floppy Disk - Save The Floppy Disk Icon means "save" for a whole generation of people who have never seen one.
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