Recently I've been thinking about common icons in use within Apps ( and on digital displays in general ) and their graphic design*. I've been thinking that in some cases the icon seems odd, outdated or redundant

Well, I've been looking at the visual style of what object is being graphically represented by the icon and realising that in certain cases an old ( redundant ) piece of technology is being displayed.

Here are the case studies I've found so far:

Hmmm..., when was the last time anyone saw a phone which looked like this? The plastic handle which we used to snuggly rest our face in back in the 1970s and which required a cradle to enable you to hang up was arguably even superseded as early as the '80s and certainly by the '90s with more "contemporary" flat, square designs often with integrated keypads and with no need for a cradle. The icon derives itself from a great big piece of coloured plastic and is nothing like today's phones - as such it's a classic piece of nostalgia celebrating a certain phase of telephone hardware design.

Again, typically we see this type of icon which looks like a TV from the past. When was the last time your TV had a visible aerial sitting on top of it? When was the last time the edges of the screen looked curved? ( because the TV's casing obscured the actual physical glass of the screen ). When was the last time you could see large visible knobs on the front of it? I'll tell you when, back in the '70s again along with brown & yellow tanned interiors and trouser flares :).

This one, I would argue might not mean anything to some younger people even now*, however it denotes the old floppy disk which we used to have to save our work onto when we used computers back in the '70s, '80s and even for much of the '90s. Now of course digital storage has been replaced by:

• Hard-discs in various flavours (internal drives, SD cards, USB sticks, portable hard-drives)
• Writable CD-Roms
• Cloud storage ( remote servers ).

Even if you could buy a floppy disk these days the chances of being able to put it into a computer are limited and even then for the amount of space you got on a disk ( typically 1.44 MB ) it would make you weep. However, check it out, in the world of graphic design and visual communication here it remains in all it's nostalgic glory immortalised as an icon...go figure!

I don't really understand why graphic design in the area of classic icon design is more resistant to change than in the area of physical industrial design ( form factors for physical items are subject to much more radical and continual change ). Perhaps people like nostalgia, or user testing reveals that people are very comfortable with these signs and symbols.

Perhaps, then, there is value in the stability of the icons not having to be reconsidered too much or needing changed. Also, critically, these icons continue to work, nothing is 'broken' and all these icons are instantly recognisable as having meaning against their function.*

Having said this, I would welcome a new, successful icon for "Phone", but think that would be a huge challenge. Perhaps we need to consider not redesigning "Phone" but considering "Call" or "Talk" or "Voice" to replace the usage of this icon - thats probably the best angle into starting to make more contemporary and meaningful icons for today's world.

-- Jamie Lemon, 25th January 2012