Anachronicons
This is a new word that I'm coining. It's pronounced,
anna-kron-ickons
These are all the button symbols that confuse even old people like me, who are old enough to know that a letter goes in an envelope, a column (blog post) is written with a pencil, or on a typewriter, an ellipses (...) means "more" (actually, it means less, but whatever.) I don't know if they're cute or ironic or unimaginative or brilliant. But I do not associate "Pencil" with "new blog post." I get confused when I see a file cabinet with envelopes flying out of it (this is a button in Outlook). What do kids think when they see an icon labeled with a dial-phone, or a phone book, or a newspaper? Or a phonograph, for Pete's sake? They've never seen those things. Or a checkbook, a stamp, a letter opener, a calendar, or a post-it note. All that paper, pre-internet stuff.
(These are actually really cool retro icons, that I haven't seen in a current app. I found them here:
http://rypearts.com/portfolio/icons/index.html)
Sorry, high-tech designers. You're trying to supplant every actual thing that we formerly had contact with as part of work and home life. You're putting everyone out of business -- bookstores, banks, stationary shops, hardware stores, newspapers, bars. Yet you continue to plaster buttons in your apps with the simple little symbols that signify what everyday items mean, or used to mean.
Write. File. Call. Drink a martini. Take a taxi. Play a song.
You think a magnifying glass means "search." I think it means "make this larger so I can see it, or burn ants in the sunlight."
When everyone's got VR goggles strapped to their heads 24/7, it'll be so quaint to reach for the virtual phone and virtual typewriter to communicate with the other humans that we can't see standing two feet away.
