There is a clash between our paper-based tradition of visual iconography and our use of computers. For centuries, if you wanted to write a visual mark — a symbol, or logo, or indicator of any sort — you expected it to be immutable.<\/p>\n
But if we phase out paper as a primary means of visual communication (and there is good reason to believe we might), then that expectation of immutability will eventually shift. A “written” icon will no longer need to be fixed in appearance, but will be able to vary over time, depending on some changing context.<\/p>\n
Whether we are looking at a logical AND gate, or a stop sign, or a right-facing arrow, we may find ourselves no longer satisfied with a particular appearance. Instead, we will expect that symbol to indicate some current state, and to change in appearance when that state changes.<\/p>\n
Such expectations are still low, because marks on paper are still the cultural norm. But once paper starts to disappear from the equation, all bets will be off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a clash between our paper-based tradition of visual iconography and our use of computers. For centuries, if you wanted to write a visual mark — a symbol, or logo, or indicator of any sort — you expected it to be immutable. But if we phase out paper as a primary means of visual … Continue reading “Computers and visual iconography”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17505"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17506,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17505\/revisions\/17506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}