I’m waiting the the PT Cruiser for my wife (no commentay on my tastes, this isn’t the thread for it) and notice the ‘engine warning light’ as I’ve got the Key in, but the motor isn’t running.
In this case, this car has an inline, fuel injected four cylinder with a clutch and a seperate electric fan.
But the ‘icon’ for the ‘Check Engine’ light is an old skool V-8 with an Air cleaner on a Carb, mechanical fan and a torque converter. (Yes, I can pick all that out in a 1/4" picture.)
s’funny the icon represents a motor you couldn’t get since the late 80’s. Course, an iconographic drawing of the current motor would be pretty unrecognisable.
I’ve never understood the low oil pressure light on by Saturn. To me, it looks like an oil lamp (the kind that houses a genie), but perhaps there is some pitcher-like device one could use to add oil. Whatever it is, it sure as hell doesn’t look like the plastic bottles the motor oil I buy comes in.
In Le Mans, the 24-hour race used to start with the drivers along one side of the track and the cars parked along the other. At the drop of the flag, each driver would run across the track, climb into his car, start the engine and drive off. (A rule known as the “Le Mans start”.) For safety reasons, it was last used in 1969.
To this day, the Porsche 911 and its variants have the key on the left of the steering wheel because it’s faster in a Le Mans start.
An icon is not a graphical reduction of the device’s image; it’s a symbol that is chosen to be as universal as possible with regard to the function it represents. The whole idea is to replace a word or phase which might be understood in only one language with one that doesn’t require knowledge of any language.
Personally, I think many of them fail miserably and since there is no repository of symbols equated with plain language equivalents and no universal symbol bank, many icons are a mystery to me until I have deduced their function from their action. That’s why the mouse hover which often displays a description in text form is so good.
Robot Arm, are you in the right thread? What does a Le Mans start have to do with iconography?
With iconography, not much; but the thread title is “Modern Automotive Anachronism” and I mentioned a current design feature based on a tradition that hasn’t happened in almost 40 years.
So many icons are images of obsolete versions of their referent. For example, if you draw an icon of a phone, it will probably be not a cellphone (or even a slimline or a desk set with all the buttons), but one of those old-time phones with the big, slanted console you could probably brain someone with and the cradle on the top with the headset resting crosswise. Maybe even with a rotary dial.
Likewise, an icon for “television” will probably have a curved CRT and maybe even bunny ears and tuning knobs.
I think it’s partly that how long they’ve been around makes them more recognizable, but I think part of it is also what Bill Watterson said about why he drew old-style phones and TV sets in his cartoons: the old machines had more “personality” to them.
Robot Arm’s observations are relevant, I just wonder why some makers have the key down in the center concole (saab?)
Matt: Good observation. I was watching (distantly) the Power Ranger’s tv show my kids were watching when I noticed their power-staff-du-jour had a rotary dial on it. I can’t help but think some young moviemaking whippersnapper spied an old phone and thought the rotary part would look cool and alien.
