- If icons can serve as a substitute for words,
can they also stand in for images?
Of course they can.
This is a great way to turn up the volume
on a project with no images or drab photography.
It's also useful to give the viewer something to solve,
thus making the communication more intimate and personal.
So how do we go about putting icons into action?
A stellar example is a booklet cover
that Paul Rand designed for the students
attending the 1939 World's Fair.
The centerpiece of the '39 World's Fair
was the Trylon and Perisphere,
two giant structures.
One, a tall pyramid shape,
the other, a sphere.
Rand could have taken a photograph provided,
add some type, and be done with the project,
but he recognized that this was intended
for design students
and required a smarter solution.
I imagine Rand followed the process similar
to the fused metaphor idea.
Rand made a list of symbols for design students.
Art, tools, color wheels,
basic geometric shapes.
He then worked to combine these
with the Trylon and Perisphere.
Perhaps a color wheel as the Perisphere
or a pencil and the Trylon.
But the simplest and most obvious idea
was to use the basic geometric shapes as the structures.
Another added element is the use of Futura.
Futura is a design with geometric forms.
These echo the icons and create harmony.
Using a photograph of a person can be an issue
in some instances.
If the identity isn't important
and we simply want to communicate the idea
of a hipster,
an icon may be more suitable.
For example, when I see this image,
I begin to ask questions.
Who is that guy?
Do I know him?
What's he looking at?
Do I like that shirt?
And so on.
These are distractions from the original goal
of communicating hipster.
Switching to a minimal icon removes all the extra diversions
and says only hipster
or in this case, no hipsters.
Icons are lifesavers when reality won't work.
I was asked to design a poster
for a series of lectures on diversity at MIT.
I had no desire to show a photo
of smiling, racially-diverse people.
That felt like a Benetton ad to me.
I wrote down all the symbols that are related to diversity
from many kinds of fish
to different sorts of baked goods.
For education, I considered symbols such as an apple,
books, chalk on a chalkboard,
and a growing tree of knowledge.
When I added MIT into the mix,
as a scientific institution,
the idea of genetic diversity or variation
in evolution made sense.
Rather than a simple apple tree,
I wanted a tree with all sorts of fruit.
My Photoshop attempts led to a tragic mutant-like tree
that seemed more at home in a horror movie.
I moved onto icons
and the creepy factor disappeared.
To create a sense of unity,
the icons all share the same form, a circle
or sections of the circle.
The flat icons created a tree
that could never exist in nature.
The forms asked the viewer to imagine it
which always has a better result
than showing something literal
and it doesn't look scary.
The beauty of icons is their ability
to cut through visual clutter with strong graphics.
They remove distractions from the primary message.
They solve issues of a photograph
that has the wrong tone
and they can do the work of creating something fictional
that doesn't actually exist.