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symbols

Close
  • A lightbulb is not an idea

    An Article by Ralph Ammer
    ralphammer.com
    Image from ralphammer.com on 2020-07-27 at 4.59.21 PM.gif

    With conventional placeholders, such as words, we can describe patterns for a large number of situations. On the other hand it is easy to fool yourself (and others) with words, since you can avoid to be specific. Any business meeting can confirm this.

    When you draw something you are forced to be specific — and honest.

    Our illustration of an “idea” from above is unconventional in the sense that it conveys specific original thoughts of what an idea is. It adds value to the words.

    And that is the catch: The drawing must be unconventional to support the conventional words. We have to make sure not to use “words in disguise”. Take a common illustration for “idea” for example, which haunts flip charts all over the world: the lightbulb.

    The lightbulb image works on a purely symbolic level, it only replaces the word “idea”. This image of a household item contains no original thought about what an idea is. While symbols like these work well as international replacements for words or icons to indicate a light switch for instance, they convey no nutritional value as illustrations — they are empty.

    • words
    • ideas
    • symbols
    • drawing
  • z-z-z

    living in symbols
    Bing Xu, Book from the Ground: From Point to Point
    • words
    • communication
    • symbols
  • An icon is a symbol equally incomprehensible in all human languages

    An icon is a symbol equally incomprehensible in all human languages. There's a reason why humans invented phonetic languages.

    Jef Raskin, Steve Jobs
    • iconography
    • symbols
  • Signs seen and unseen

    B25CC909-656E-437D-B98E-114FD117277C_1_105_c.jpg

    Direct instructions at point of need may encourage writers and programmers to divert diversions. Or not, because signs are seen only a few times before becoming unseen.

    Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes
    • symbols
    • seeing

    🛑 STOP NOT DESIGNINGMAKINGCREATING 🛑

  • APL386 Unicode

    A Font by Adám Brudzewsky
    abrudz.github.io
    Screenshot of abrudz.github.io on 2020-08-21 at 1.46.20 PM.png

    APL font based on Adrian Smith's APL385 font with a fun, whimsical look, inspired by Comic Sans Serif.

    APL (named after the book A Programming Language) is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent most functions and operators, leading to very concise code. It has been an important influence on the development of concept modeling, spreadsheets, functional programming, and computer math packages. It has also inspired several other programming languages.

    • fun
    • symbols
    • programming
    • graphics
    • typography
  • Unicode Arrows

    A Fragment by Rachel Binx
    unicodearrows.com
    Screenshot of unicodearrows.com on 2021-08-14 at 1.14.53 PM.png

    ↬ welcome to the best part of the unicode spec ↫

    1. ​​Intelligent arrows​​
    • typography
    • symbols
  • The utter nothingness of being

    Everything written symbols can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs - but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn’t come to us by way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.

    "But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren’t we left in the utter nothingness of being?"

    Yes.

    Kimura Kyūho, On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship
    1. ​​The Elements of Typographic Style​​
    • zen
    • meaning
    • symbols
    • being
    • reality
  • Ducks and decorated sheds

    duck2.jpg?w=650

    A duck is a building whose confirmation is a complete symbol or icon. A decorated shed is a building to which symbols, often commonplace signs, have been attached.

    Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking
    1. ​​Googie architecture​​
    • architecture
    • symbols
  • Words and Images

    An Essay by René Magritte
    1. ​​Le ☀️ est caché par les ☁️​​
    • symbols
    • images
    • words
    • art
  • Book from the Ground: From Point to Point

    A Novel by Bing Xu
    mitpress.mit.edu
    1. ​​z-z-z​​
    • language
    • symbols
    • words
  • Between the Words

    An Artwork by Nicholas Rougeux
    www.c82.net
    Image from www.c82.net on 2021-10-11 at 9.58.51 AM.jpeg

    Moby Dick.

    Between the Words is an exploration of visual rhythm of punctuation in well-known literary works. All letters, numbers, spaces, and line breaks were removed from entire texts of classic stories...leaving only the punctuation in one continuous line of symbols in the order they appear in texts. The remaining punctuation was arranged in a spiral starting at the top center with markings for each chapter and classic illustrations at the center.

    • visualization
    • symbols
    • books
  • BeOS Icons

    Image from medium.com on 2020-08-31 at 3.32.25 PM.png
    Boris Müller, Menus, Metaphors and Materials: Milestones of User Interface Design
    • graphics
    • iconography
    • symbols

See also:
  1. words
  2. graphics
  3. typography
  4. iconography
  5. communication
  6. ideas
  7. drawing
  8. language
  9. images
  10. art
  11. fun
  12. programming
  13. zen
  14. meaning
  15. being
  16. reality
  17. architecture
  18. seeing
  19. visualization
  20. books
  1. Bing Xu
  2. Ralph Ammer
  3. René Magritte
  4. Adám Brudzewsky
  5. Kimura Kyūho
  6. Boris Müller
  7. Peter G. Rowe
  8. Jef Raskin
  9. Rachel Binx
  10. Edward Tufte
  11. Nicholas Rougeux