Shifting Iconography in the Digital Age
As technology changes and expands, the imagery we use to represent our world loses its meaning
Just as the work of writers relies on the universality of a dictionary, the work of designers depends on a widespread, shared understanding of the meaning of images.
To communicate something simple—like a camera, for example—we rely on a shared image of what something that takes pictures looks like. But today, what a camera looks like is more nebulous than it used to be.
Many of us remember that cameras once used stuff called film, which, when exposed to light, captured the image in front of us. There was a shutter that opened and closed, and made a clicking sound. Cameras used to be much larger, but like most technology, they shrank into something handheld, more portable, and more affordable.
And still, despite all these changes, most of us now use other little digital devices to take pictures: our smartphones.
So, what does a camera look like? To more and more people, a camera looks like a rectangle with rounded corners—a phone. But these days, that’s…
