Words as an Icon
Why do words mean what they mean? Who came up with their meanings? What images depict these words?
These are all questions I set out to answer as I worked on these icons here. I began by choosing three different verbs and researching their meanings, roots, history, and finding connections here and there between different things. My goal was to find a connection between the word and something else that I could use to represent the verb as an icon without being too direct.
The left verb is revive, and my research led me to a theme of spiritual revivalism. I used a pill breaking open to pour out a cross as a means of representing the word. The middle verb is spill. This was a little tricky, but I ended up going with the phrase, "spill the beans" and that is the abstract can of beans that you see there. The last verb on the right is join. You can see each half of the shapes beginning to join each other in the middle and with the small finger like objects inside. The whole icon is reminiscent of a yin and yang symbol that shows the joining of good and evil.
After I finalized the icon designs to the simplest form I could, I began the process of creating the icons with my hands in real life. Revive became a cardboard cut out, held against a bright light to cast a pill and cross shape onto the wall. Spill became a marker based drawing on paper. Last but not least, join became a colorized cardboard cut-out laid on top of a blank piece of paper with pink marker behind one half of the shape.
