The icon that I chose to compare with the ancient characters or letters would be the Meet & Chat icon from the Zoom. The Meet & Chat icon is a rectangle with rounded corners, and it has an extended triangle on the left bottom. In nowadays, we call this shape text bubble. Thanks to the excellent design of the text bubble, the extended part of the text bubble can precisely indicate who is the talker and the bubble can provide plenty of space for the content. The text bubble icon also has huge differences from ancient characters or letters. One example of the ancient character or letter is the double oval shape symbol that represents the mouth or alphabet R in Egyptian hieroglyphics. This Egyptian hieroglyphics character or letter is very figurative and it indubitably metaphors a mouth. If we compare this character to the text bubble icon, we can find that the text bubble icon does not borrow any references from real life and it does not stand for any meanings. The text bubble is more like a guide or a tool that helps audiences to better understand the situation. All the characters and symbols are created to help people understand and perceive information. However, the text bubble has nearly no language boundaries, people from all over the world can understand what the text bubble is trying to tell them. This really proves that the text bubble is a high-level cognitive icon and it has a completely different nature from any ancient characters or letters.
“The text bubble is more like a guide or a tool that helps audiences to better understand the situation.” That’s really interesting, I never notice that.
Nice findings on the changes and development of the text bubbles – would be more awesome if there’s any image reference that could show the similarities and differences! Also, how does the Egyptian show the direction of the bubble? Is it the same or different than what we use right now?
Your analysis would be better understood with images included so that we could see specifically what you are talking about.
I think you are mistaken though about an item being figurative and being a metaphor. If an icon is figurative and is showing a mouth then it is representative of the mouth but is metaphorical for speaking which is more of an abstract concept without literal visual representation.
Agree with you about how the text bubble is very different from ancient symbols because it has so much significance in present time.