Ok, slight exaggeration to the title. Designing simplicity IS hard but I didn’t almost die creating symbols. I have actually loved the experience over this weekend, so here’s my blog on what happened…
In my entire academic life growing up, I was encouraged to add detail; to add more detail into my creative writing, to add more complex emotional detail in playing a character, to add details which would separate my clothing designs from that of someone else’s designs. This continued after University working in Market Research where it’s ALL about details, as many readers will know well. Detail, detail, detail! The devil is in the detail. Don’t leave out any details. Beware of the person who can’t be bothered by details. So, it’s no wonder that for hours on end I was struggling with a small project designing 3 symbols over the weekend.
I spent the best part of my day on Saturday trying to design these 3 symbols, and then again bugging my dad about it during his birthday party the next day. My dad, also a former artist, was able to give me some ideas but his creative style is just as detailed as mine, if not more so.
Designing a symbol to represent anything is difficult and yet, symbols are all around us. After 2 days thinking of symbols I was noticing them everywhere and found myself really paying attention – admiring symbols I’ve walked passed everyday, suddenly seeing them in a new light and in awe of how the designers were able to create one image for something actually more complex; all from a series of block colours and lines to represent something really hard to sum-up, like an instruction, emotion, ideology or an entire religion.
What I wanted to do was create 3 symbols that represented 3 human traits for a side-project, and looked online to find representations of these traits without any luck. I was asking my husband-to-be “How can I create these three symbols which are immediately understood, cross all cultural barriers and yet are different to anything else I’ve seen on the web so they’re recognizable to our cause?” It’s a tricky task indeed, for something so simple.
Road signs which explain an instruction to be recognized in nano-seconds are particularly awe-inspiring, no matter how mundane and a part of our urban landscapes they are. For instance, in the UK, three white lines on a bottle-green background says “you’re about to see three lanes, so choose your lane now”. A ‘T shape’ of white and red on a blue background represents a dead-end road. But it looks like a T. Of course, culturally and over time, the meanings are assigned to a symbol by people. A symbol like the one the singer Prince created represents him as a brand, his history, his songs and fashion – all in one simple form. But, without it being used and understood by other people, it is meaningless.
Symbols however, are not to be confused with connotation, or semiotics. For instance, an image of Dice can represent gambling, games, or fate but a symbol usually has one absolute meaning. In some cases, 2 meanings are given/used where the origins of a symbol have been overlapped by strong cultural use in more modern times, surpassing the original meaning. A good example of this is the Buddhist and Hindu cross symbol the Suavastika (often still called Swastika), which was then used in the 1930’s by Adolf Hitler by flipping the image and then using that to become a symbol for the Nazi’s or more loosely and in modern times; hate and/or racism.
Symbols are also used for star-signs, for tattoos, in alchemy and in music where again, these simple shapes are so well recognized they don’t need a text-based explanation to accompany them. When learning how to play the piano many moons ago, learning to read and eventually write music was very much like learning a new language. I had to know that this shape ‘#’ which is now used as a hastag for Twitter is actually a Sharp and only for particular black keys on the piano (or else I’d get a light tap on the hand). So one symbol represented a word, a sound and a direction/location in this case. Sometimes, a symbol is different across cultures and language, for instance in Greek the symbol ‘;’ is used as a question mark – not a ‘?’ as we use in English (again, a light tap on the hand for mis-use by my Greek teacher).
After 13 pages in my notebook and 4 photoshop experiments I am pleased to report I am almost there, but what a lot of work for something so simple!
In research, this applies too. We find ourselves trying to evoke certain scenarios or sometimes ask long-questions where much detail is needed. We’re told to get those 40 minute surveys into 20 minutes, or 2 minutes for mobile. But as is the saying: “If I had more time I could’ve made it more simple”. So true, particularly for Symbol design and it just goes to show how important a role designers have in creating simplicity.