εἰκών

Have you ever noticed that the save icon is a floppy disk, even though they became obsolete twenty years ago?

That's called a "skeuomorph" - when something new takes on the appearance of what it replaced.

And once you start to look, they're everywhere... pic.twitter.com/Hdkpr0Jp5w

— The Cultural Tutor (@culturaltutor) February 6, 2023

my challops on the word iconic (long deprecated for overuse) is this:

i: u know the thing where ppl say "next to the word xxx in the dictionary there's just a photo of yyy"?
ii: well in semiotics that photo would be functioning as an ICON (the exact technical term)
iii: and so when ppl describe such-and-such as "ICONIC" (and other ppl make shift to get mad) what is being claimed (speculatively, not always correctly, no doubt rarely cognisant of my excellent and correct challops) is that the object under discussion could in ths future function in this way…
iv: … viz that it could in the near future be popped jokily into a dictionary to function as the indicator of a quality or state of being

εἰκών is also Blobby's real name.

in a sense there is no word in the entire dictionary that blobby isn't an indicator for

βλοββυ

vlovvy

The skeuomorphic sign for a level crossing with the steam locomotive is being phased out in the UK. This makes me sad. The replacement with a Diesel locomotive looks rubbish! It is far harder to tell what it is from a distance.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/why-is-this-road-sign-set-to-be-removed-from-uk-roads

I don't buy the argument that younger people don't know what it is! Pretty sure they will be familiar via Thomas & Friends, etc.

When Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert's pictorial road signs were brought in (1965) there were still steam locomotives on British railways, so the symbol only became skeuomorphic after 3 years.

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said that there were no plans to change the signs used to warn of level crossings on public roads to move them into line with the new private signs, which show a modern train and a gate. (telegraph, april 22)

wittgenstein proved there can be no such thing as a private sign

i have a beetle in a matchbox that says otherwise

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81LkrndM6LL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

I'm certainly a designer who has mostly disliked skeuomorphic icons (disk and phone receiver the two most common examples I guess) and tried to avoid dealing with them in my own work.

every icon for anything at all shd just be an old-timey picture of the sphinx which is terrible

https://jafstore01.blob.core.windows.net/nop-thumbs/0006763_elderly-people-road-sign_550.jpeg

some legends just never die!

I'm all for a hieroglyphic resurgence. What does it mean? Just click around and find out.

RETVRN to this guy (for all yr second vowel needs):

https://i.imgur.com/FgBdw66.png

I generally agree that an icon is only effective inasmuch as it is recognizable. But they mostly do a pretty good job of communicating.

I am SOFA KING sick of people talking about the floppy-disk save icon. Is its referent outdated? Yes. Does it work, for most people most of the time, regardless of language? Also yes.

When I chance upon a "save" icon that is just a down arrrow, I worry - because in other contexts that also means "I don't like this."

In my work, people love to use an X in a checkbox to indicate "yes," but X can also indicate "no" (cf. Family Feud). So I tell people to use a check mark... which is itself a relic of the ink and print era.

The search icon is a magnifying glass.

Quick poll: do you, personally, own a magnifying glass? Do you use it regularly, for things that are not entomology or crime scene investigation?

Probably not.

But you fucking know what the icon means.

the E-guy is from 5000 yrs ago and everyone still understands him

yes, those are called symbols (in the semiotic tradition mark mentioned). they shouldn't be too confounding considering they are ubiquitous! are these people mad at the alphabet too?

next time someone chides you for calling something "iconic," sigh dramatically and say "fine, it's indexical"

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/6fa/06a/f29f0541b8cab85631e2d4c2e10d690511-31-clippy.rhorizontal.w700.jpg

any twitter account with a white classical sculpture face for an avatar is immediately suspect to me

correctly!

but the list of skeuomorphs is interesting