On my desk there is a book called “Understanding Comics”. It has a whole section that goes into how various degrees of fidelity with comic drawings, icons, and photographs create empathic connections.
I would encourage everyone to read this. Your take away is likely going to be that you shouldn’t show any kind of facial features at all, nor should you pick a color for your icon other than black, white, or grey.
On Oct 22, 2013, at 3:38 PM, Jared Zimmerman jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org wrote:
Steven, joke aside, you have a good point. it IS easier to empathize with a human face rather than an approximation of one, I think we're all in agreement over this, even if we're not in agreement over how to do that.
--- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
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