More cartoon icons please

 

I took this photo in a plane WC a few years ago. If only all warning signs could emote like this. 

Now you got it

 Thanks to Annetta Cheek for this, from Yellowstone National Park.

Old posts you might like

Blog posts whoosh past you and get forgotten. So here are one or two from 2010 you might enjoy.

Editor vs designers

Fougasse

It's a sign

Turn your house upside down

Awesome, 1950s style

Forget awesome and mind-blowing... we all know that interesting and amusing is as much as we can hope for most of the time.

Well you did ask

 

Learn with BOOK

This is from Punch magazine, 9 May 1962. I've been looking for it for some time but was searching under the wrong name. What astonishes me is that I don't remember any electronic gadgets in the 60s that displayed text. What exactly was he parodying?

Learn With BOOK

by R.J. Heathorn

A new aid to rapid—almost magical– learning has made its appearance. Indications are that if it catches on all the electronic gadgets will be so much junk.

The new device is known as Built-in Orderly Organised Knowledge. The makers generally call it by its initials, BOOK.

Many advantages are claimed over the old-style learning and teaching aids on which most people are brought up nowadays. It has no wires, no electric circuit to break down. No connection is needed to an electricity power point. It is made entirely without mechanical parts to go wrong or need replacement.

Anyone can use BOOK, even children, and it fits comfortably into the hands. It can be conveniently used sitting in an armchair by the fire.

How does this revolutionary, unbelievably easy invention work? Basically BOOK consists only of a large number of paper sheets. These may run to hundreds where BOOK covers a lengthy programme of information. Each sheet bears a number in sequence, so that the sheets cannot be used in the wrong order.

To make it even easier for the user to keep the sheets in the proper order they are held firmly in place by a special locking device called a ‘binding’.

Each sheet of paper presents the user with an information sequence in the form of symbols, which he absorbs optically for automatic registration on the brain. When one sheet has been assimilated a flick of the finger turns it over and further information is found on the other side.

By using both sides of each sheet in this way a great economy is effected, thus reducing both the size and cost of BOOK. No buttons need to be pressed to move from one sheet to another, to open or close BOOK, or to start it working.

BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. Instantly it is ready for use. Nothing has to be connected up or switched on. The user may turn at will to any sheet, going backwards or forwards as he pleases. A sheet is provided near the beginning as a location finder for any required information sequence.

A small accessory, available at trifling extra cost, is the BOOKmark. This enables the user to pick up his programme where he left off on the previous learning session. BOOKmark is versatile and may be used in any BOOK.

The initial cost varies with the size and subject matter. Already a vast range of BOOKs is available, covering every conceivable subject and adjusted to different. levels of aptitude. One BOOK, small enough to be held in the hands, may contain an entire learning schedule.

Once purchased, BOOK requires no further upkeep cost; no batteries or wires are needed, since the motive power, thanks to an ingenious device patented by the makers, is supplied by the brain of the user.

BOOKs may be stored on handy shelves and for ease of reference the programme schedule is normally indicated on the back of the binding.

Altogether the Built-in Orderly Organised Knowledge seems to have great advantages with no drawbacks. We predict a big future for it.

Privacy notices (not that kind)

Our doctor's surgery places the receptionists in a space that sticks into the room. There's a perspex screen that they've treated as a notice board, now almost completely covered in notices with random rules and guidance. 

I don't think the notices are there only or even mainly to give information - there's another notice board across the room. They are there to make the receptionists feel more secure.

One of Christopher Alexander's design patterns describes this: 183 Workspace enclosures.

"People cannot work effectively if their workspace is too enclosed or too exposed... You feel more comfortable in a workspace if there is a wall behind you. (If your back is exposed you feel vulnerable–you can never tell if someone is looking at you, or if someone is coming towards you from behind.)"

I wondered if the gap at the back is there because they hadn't enough notices. But I'm pretty sure it is for them to look out through to check who is in the room. 

 

Smutty What3words addresses

Looked up a What3words reference for our information design summer school, about to start,

It gave me //friends.cuter.behind which is just too Benny Hill to actually give someone (#metoo), so I moved a few metres sideways and got //honey.sizzled.call.

What’s going on?