Icons

Evolution of the icon and its history

When comparing modern mobile app iconography to ancient writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphics or Mayan pictographs, it is evident that both types use images to transmit concepts swiftly. For example, consider the “mail” icon in many mobile apps—a basic envelope indicating communication, similar to how Egyptian glyphs employed animals or symbols to describe activities or concepts. Both systems rely on learned metaphors: comprehending an envelope implies “message” in today’s context, much as understanding a bird glyph may signify “soul” or “flying” in ancient times.

Ancient writings, such as Sumerian cuneiform, also served a utilitarian purpose, conveying abstract concepts like ownership or numbers. Similarly, modern icons have evolved as universally known symbols for digital actions: the “trash bin” icon represents deletion, using the physical metaphor of throwing something away. To interact effectively, modern app users must understand the context behind icons, just as they would learn the meanings of ancient scripts.

Pictography & Modern Icons

By looking at both Mayan graphs and airbnb’s icons and graphs, I realized there are many similarity from the creations to their meanings.

The first thing I realized is their shape, you can really tell that each of the icons or graphs are limited to a certain size, and they are all around to be this big, in my personal opinion, I think the creator trying to make people easy to read, and clearly to determine the meaning behind the icons and graphs.

More than that, let me take an example from Mayans’ glyphs, the spirit and the location or map icon from the airbnb. In the spirit glyph, we can easy to see a circle, some curves and many dots in the right size, circles and curves are somehow just like human’s face, and those dots maybe telling a story of spirit and mind since they are full of ideas and thinkings. On the other hand, the airbnb location icon is made by a beacon and a curved paper or map, the beacon can potentially be considered as the location of something, and the map shows the scale. In conclusion, both the glyph and icon are really start with some objects that can be shown a real life thing then people assume the meaning behind to form a complete glyph and icon that everyone can understand and get used to it.