We had a conversation the other day about how the concept of an icon that says "change language" was a . . . formidable . . . design challenge. I mentioned that I'd brought this up to the Design Guild a few months back, and we spent several hours talking about it.
They had some far-out concepts. But the end boiled down to something like this:
Obviously, this is something I threw together in about 20 minutes. I pulled glyphs from the WP logo for it; the proportions are way off, and i don't know that it's going to work below 32 pixels.
Here's the thinking:
Indicating *languages* is next to impossible. Indicating *scripts* is less so. People will be more likely to recognize foreign scripts than foreign language names (e.g., if you don't speak a Latin script, "English", "Deutsch", and "Italiano" are going to look the same to you). Opposition research showed that most of the more intelligent switchers depend on script-recognition than actual word recognition.
Thoughts? I'm eager to think about this because I'm working on the "Wikipedia 2015" designs, and it's important to have a handle on this for them.
--- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I agree that finding an icon that universally means "language" is a hard task. I thought about using different approaches and all can be misinterpreted:
- World globe - Bubble speech - A neutral flag (e.g., http://lh3.ggpht.com/davidtse916/R0FmtWc0aJI/AAAAAAAACY8/Z10TPVFupoc/s800/3.... ) - Sticky figure (e.g., http://imagecdn.maketecheasier.com/2011/11/settings-univeral-access.png)
The good part is that by complementing the icon with the current language name, the user can get a better idea.
The use of scripts to convey language is what Google Translate did with their icon: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.transl...
The problem is that including several scripts will require to much detail for an icon. I tried to make a simplified version based on yours but trying to emphasize the idea of selection:
[image: Inline image 1]
Pau
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.orgwrote:
We had a conversation the other day about how the concept of an icon that says "change language" was a . . . formidable . . . design challenge. I mentioned that I'd brought this up to the Design Guild a few months back, and we spent several hours talking about it.
They had some far-out concepts. But the end boiled down to something like this:
Obviously, this is something I threw together in about 20 minutes. I pulled glyphs from the WP logo for it; the proportions are way off, and i don't know that it's going to work below 32 pixels.
Here's the thinking:
Indicating *languages* is next to impossible. Indicating *scripts* is less so. People will be more likely to recognize foreign scripts than foreign language names (e.g., if you don't speak a Latin script, "English", "Deutsch", and "Italiano" are going to look the same to you). Opposition research showed that most of the more intelligent switchers depend on script-recognition than actual word recognition.
Thoughts? I'm eager to think about this because I'm working on the "Wikipedia 2015" designs, and it's important to have a handle on this for them.
Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
