Comments on: Icons, Symbols and a Semiotic Web

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 04:20:38 +0000

pixeline - Interesting questions. I think ‘home’ didn’t really come about with any thinking behind, like you say, I think it just ‘happened’. It has, however, become a convention to a certain degree on the web.

Flags for languages is a bad idea in a web interface context. Flags to represent countries (the real one’s, on flagpoles) are a good idea though!

Kyle - Thanks Kyle, appreciate it. If you look in the ‘articles’ section, there should be some links to that series of articles. Hope you enjoy them.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 08:18:25 +0000

First of all, great article (something that’s become synonymous with your site.

Secondly, love the little touches in your comments box. Very elegant.

Finally, is it possible someone can point me to the five grid articles on this site. I have the 5th one bookmarked, but never seem able to track down the other 4 installments.

By: pixeline

pixeline — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 17:12:03 +0000

nice article ,thanks !

a few remarks, though:
you coin the symbol “home” as being a good example.
Well, i ‘ve never understood why the first “entrance” page of a website is the “home” page. i suspect this (rather senseless) association probably comes from a coffee-machine discussion at some ARPA meeting 20 years ago or something ;) “hey bud, how do you do with your website about your new home?” - “well, truly, Frank, after six months, i’m still stuck on the frontdoor “.

Also, flags for languages : not a good idea either: here in Belgium, we do not speak Belgian. Half the country speaks Dutch, the other Half speaks either German or French.

So we have to avoid putting flags for languages because people tend to think they are links for international websites.

just my 2 cent.

All the best,

Alexandre

By: Andrea Bilder

Andrea Bilder — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 01:26:30 +0000

Some evil people are beleaved to manipulate signs. They play with letters and arrows but you never see them in action if you need to.

By: Jolo

Jolo — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:03:51 +0000

Mark, a great find is this book Wayfinding for graphic designers.

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 04:36:14 +0000

Reuben - Well, i’ve not come across a very readable book yet. As semiotics is such an ‘academic’ subject, I’m finding it very difficult to distill the practical information from the stuff I’m reading.

When I do find something worth reading, I’ll let you know.

James - No fixed date yet, although it could be as soon as Christmas. It’s just very, very time-consuming. Keep tuned though.

By: James Bowskill

James Bowskill — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:43:00 +0000

You’ve whet my appetite for the book! Is there a release date yet?

By: Reuben Whitehouse

Reuben Whitehouse — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:06:30 +0000

More great, educational stuff Mark – thanks also.

Got any recommended reading on these subjects?

By: Kev Mears

Kev Mears — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 02:34:16 +0000

This a very pertinent discussion for the project I’m on right now. I think that the history of signage and the lessons learnt from real world signage systems could be a great help to designers when considering IA.

Look forward to more ofyour interesting and always practical articles.

By: Tor Bollingmo

Tor Bollingmo — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 21:07:31 +0000

Made me realize that there is signage everywhere, when I saw the scroll icon in Opera when I was scrolling down the article :) Great article.

By: Fin

Fin — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 06:47:46 +0000

Great article.

Thanks for a lot of that, actually.