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I am busy working on a personal project that is making me improve my illustration skills. I am looking forward to the finished project (which will be more colorful.)

Iconography

i·co·nog·ra·phy [ahy-kuh-nog-ruh-fee]

symbolicrepresentation, especially the conventional meanings attached to an image orimages.

Icons are becoming a standard repertoire of  modern designers, most commonly used in logos, instructional signs, and phone apps. We are surrounded by icons: restrooms, road signs, and other everyday graphics. With these simplistic images they can inform us about rules, products, dangers, and point us in the right direction. We would be pretty loss without using images to point the way.

Humans have been developing icons since man began drawing in caves. They painted images of horses and other animals to represent the everyday life in 33,000 BCE. In the not-so-distant past magazines and advertisements required that each "job" was separate: art director, photographer, typography, illustrator, and ect...These days with the use of computers designers can really do it all, but big corporations are able to pull in experts in each field to develop design excellence (because it is hard to be the best at everything).

College instructors are encouraging visual communication students to develop icons as a part of dynamic systems to help make brochures, annual reports, magazines, and other texts easier to navigate and utilize. If this begins at university then we can bring these skills to the workforce and use it for real use that truly serves a purpose. My first project as a visual communications major I had to develop over 400 bird symbols for the first lecture, and continued to develop more symbols over the coming weeks. This was boot camp for developing various iconography using various mediums.

Symbols are used in small sizes, and tend to be simplistic with high contrast. Simple is beneficial (especially when the symbol is small), but it should contain enough details that it does not need an explanation in order to use the symbol. Icons should hit our basic cognitive understanding, based on its representation.

I encourage you to make an icon this week that represents something in our daily life, and post a link below.

Iconography

An icon is simply: a representation or if you want to ad to it: a representation that stands for its object. Iconography is becoming more entrenched in our modern visual culture. We see icons on the apps on our phones, street signs, and even in our browsers.

I recently designed the new website, and we decided to use iconography for the navigation. It was challenging, yet fun to come up with icons to use for this site. Icons are almost simplified logos. A logo acts as an icon for a business, but usually more meaning is involved versus an icon. Icons are typically made as simple as possible, because they are used small and need to be universally understood. Icons were some of the first art made by humans. Simple figures that stood for people, weapons, and animals. A way of recording culture. How we have created the symbols has changed through the centuries. We began with simple cave paintings, added color, then used more developed tools for etchings and other art making techniques at styles, and now we have computers and the cellphone has really sparked a new need for unique yet universal icons .

We need unique icons for the personality, customization, and style that we crave as a way of expression. Companies needs the uniqueness for brand identity. Universal icons are needed become a global society. Icons need to relate across cultures and languages. Because we have this rich history in iconography there are still many styles and techniques used for making icons, but there has been a return to simple illustrations, due to the nature of cellphones. The icons used on cellphones (smart and not so smart) and it is difficult to read an illustrious icon because the detail will be lost in small sizes. App icons help us identify the program we want to use and assist us in a quicker many than we would be able to with words.

I encourage you to observe the world around you this week and identify the icons around you, and make some icons of your own to some how help facilitate your life in some manner.

Doing GOOD

Recently I have been looking at GOOD.is site. They have an amazing breadth of infographics. This particular one is based on the amount of e-waste which has been and will continue to be our growing problem around the world. Most of the time we just leave products to junk and rust at some junk yard or even in our local dump. I encourage you to look at what digital products you don't use or thinking of getting rid of them and find resources in your area for recycling. Most places have free recycling but even if you have to pay it will be a cheaper price now than the one we and our children will have to reap later.


http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1010/digital-dump/flat.html

Deadman Walking

A collaboration between GOOD and Amanda Buck. Interesting info graphic, applicable, different, and easy to interpret the data.

All of those are great tools to use for an infographic. We don't have to keep making pie charts, bar graphs, and line graphs. This one is a twist on the pie graph.