The Evolution of Icons
Have you ever stopped to think about why icons look the way they do and what is their origin? Well, yeah… everybody knows that the Save icon originates from the good old floppy disk; and that the WhatsApp logo portrays a vintage phone receiver, but there are quite a few icons with a far less known, and a very fascinating, origin story.
The Save icon originates from the good old floppy disk
WhatsApp logo portrays a vintage phone receiver
So, what was it all about?
UXI LIVE, May 2021
I was honored to be one of the lecturers at the biggest UX conference in Israel. My part turned out to be special and unique: 3 short video clips that revealed the origin stories of 3 popular icons.
Sounds easy? Hell, no!
It took hours upon hours of research, reading, studying, writing, designing, rewriting and editing.
I was amazed to find out that those stories fold so much history, archaeology, art, cinema and
other areas. It all comes down to those small objects that even in the size of 16px can express a whole concept.
Heart
The origins of the heart shape:
The human heart is where feelings and character traits are
Heart-shaped leaves of a plant called silphium, which produced a birth control medicine in ancient Greece
The Heart in Art and Culture:
The Sacred Heart of Christ expresses the limitless love of Jesus for mankind
Valentine's Day is heavily celebrated and has a huge PR investment around the world
Arrow
The origins of the arrow shape:
Prehistoric men used arrowed-spear, bow and arrow
Middle Ages archers squads
The arrow as the symbol of direction and movement:
Settings
The gear as settings icon: a metaphor taken from the physical-mechanical world
Gears are used for tuning physical instruments; changing their location, size or type will affect the operation of the instruments. Changing something in the mechanism will change the way the machine works.
Similarly, the setting icon in an interface allows changes and adjustments tailored to our needs: change language, update date and time, switch to dark mode and more.
So, the use of gear as a setting icon is actually a metaphor taken from the physical-mechanical world into the visual-digital world.
Gears throughout history and culture
The Antikythera Mechanism dated 2nd century BC, was found on 1900
James Watt 1774 Steam Engine Model
The famous Big Ben in London has precise, well-maintained carved gears
"Modern Times", 1936, Charlie Chaplin
Conference day
