- It's always nice to remember that as designers,
our trade is based on symbolism.
We're literally the crafters of symbols as a representation
of some thing or things that convey a concept or essence
that best represents our clients.
The reason the panoply of hearts and crosses
and hashtags and Wi-Fi lines get tooled and retooled
into various iterations and even mashed up
with other symbols is because they are already imbued
with meaning that doesn't have to be re-explained
to the public.
But the other thing to bear in mind is that symbols
are a living entity.
They are continually roiling with evolution.
It's why a trend report like this is so important
in calling out or addressing the trajectory of imagery
and making note of relatively imperceptible shifts
that in future chapters become much more evident.
To play this out, I'd like to show you a handful of coins.
Now, all of these are at least a couple thousand years old.
You'll notice that each of these feature a central image.
If asked what these images are,
it may not be immediately apparent to you.
I think this one's pretty easy.
Some kind of a star or maybe the sun.
We'll be coming back to that one in our first trend.
But the five-pointed symbol we call a star today
would have been called a pentagram.
And it often was associated with one's faith
but never stood for a point of light
out there in the night sky.
This one is obviously a heart.
Or is it?
It's actually an ivy leaf, which will eventually
evolve into our heart.
But at that point in time, the shape
is all they have in common.
And this one, wow, no, I know. This one blew me away too.
It's a lightning bolt.
You know, no one had a camera and lightning happens,
well, lightning quick.
So who's to say that's not exactly what a bolt
looked like 2,500 years ago.