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 also what a bank looks like. And a music player. Perhaps a community. Sometimes a therapist. And so many other things. Our understanding of objects has flattened.
A friend of mine and his wife have a backup landline, as cell reception can be spotty in their apartment. He told me he asked his son recently to answer the phone. As the phone rang, his son ran around looking for it, even though the landline was in plain view. He thought “phone” was his mom’s orange-cased iPhone. Without knowing that the ringing was coming from that unidentifiable thing on the wall, the call was missed.
Imagine if the words “sunglasses,” “thunder,” “continent,” and “sorrow” were suddenly replaced with a single, brand-new word that meant each of those things, depending on their context. How would writers respond? How would readers know which meaning to infer when the new word was used? This is what is happening to designers.
