Brought to you by our Guest Blogger, Nomi.
The word "icon" comes from the Greek word "eikon," meaning "image. " Put simply, an icon is an image, picture, or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it. Historically, icons were used as signage to communicate larger ideas in shorthand for safety purposes, in religious texts or artifacts, or simply to facilitate the ordering of people's everyday lives. The images tended to be quite literal, only one degree away from the action, object or concept they represented.
With the introduction of digital tools, however, there was an added degree of metaphor placed between icons and what they represented; icons were used to reference an action or idea in the physical world that served as an explanation for an activity in the digital world. For example, you clicked on a picture of an envelope to access your email. This approach to icon design made sense as people were making the transition from the physical world to the digital. But for people born in the 1990s and later, who are growing up immersed from day one in the digital world, is this layer of metaphor a middleman they may not want or appreciate?
An evolution in the design and styling of digital icons can be observed since they were first introduced with the launch of the Macintosh personal computer in 1984. Designed by Susan Kare, they were black and white (as the Macintosh was originally a black-and-white system) and sized at 32px by 32px (see picture above). They were also quite representational for the most part, depicting hands using pencils or paintbrushes to write on documents, envelopes with stamp and address resting against a pile of parcels, and a face-with-speech-bubble containing "!" to indicate communication. These were references to pre-digital tools we may not even think of as "technology" because they have been part of our lives for so long--the technology of the postal service, of a writing utensil, even the technology of language.
Since this time, especially with the advent of the internet, icons have been transitioning into simpler and more concise references, relying on a level of trust and familiarity already established. In some cases that is still handled via references to the "real" world. For example in online retail, where establishing ease and trust is paramount, design has had tremendous success facilitating and "selling" the concept with familiar references to the real world shopping experience. Isn't it nice to click your "shopping cart" to see the list of items you've identified for purchase on a site? The online sale of clothing has just overtaken the sale of tech products, suggesting that mainstream adoption has outpaced that of the tech-elite.
But you are unlikely to see a talking face with elaborate speech bubble containing text; a simplified small round speech bubble is understood as the "comments" icon, a common metaphor on blogs. And even further from original icon styles, look at the "chat" icon on Yahoo chat: simply the ubiquitous yellow smiley emoticon. A reference pulled directly from the visual lexicon of instant-messaging, it is zero degrees away from what it represents.
So, how will this affect the future of icon design? Just like all design, it has to keep up with its audience. The "digital native" generation has a familiarity with and trust of digital media, not to mention patterns of learning and information gathering that are neurologically different from that of previous generations. One space to watch may be icon design for educational tools as digital media increasingly enter--and in some cases replace-- the classroom. New generations of learners have no associations with previous teaching models, so symbolic references to physical tools like schoolbooks, pencils, papers, and blackboards, may become obsolete. The middleman of metaphors borrowed from physical reality may be eliminated altogether as the digital world need only refer to itself in order to be understood.
Nice icons,Also see:
http://www.freeiconsweb.com