But this assumed people would read left to right and understand causality between frames. By illustrating cause and effect in a three-part cartoon, designers could communicate the danger even if the symbol lost its meaning. One idea was to add context to the symbol. Since the 1970s, engineers, anthropologists, physicists, and behavioral scientists have proposed different design solutions to the problem. A symbol like the Jolly Roger, for instance, wouldn’t work for WIPP - people might not understand it, or think it marked buried treasure. It turns out, few things (outside of organized religions and ritualized traditions) last that long. In the 1990s, he was invited to work on the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, or WIPP, a massive storage site for radioactive waste in the southeastern plains of New Mexico, organized by the US Department of Energy.īenford was brought in to help calculate the probability that someone or something would intrude on the site for as long as it remains dangerous - approximately the next 10,000 years. And that raises the question: could the meaning of symbols like this one stand the test of time?įew people have pondered that question quite like Gregory Benford, a physicist and science fiction author. Yet it has remained iconic for decades, helping people recognize serious dangers that may remain a threat for thousands of years to come. And unlike most other hazard symbols, it doesn’t reference a visible object or idea. The design is simple - you only need a straightedge and a compass to recreate it. It’s easy to overlook how much visual communication work this kind of symbol is doing. So it was unforgettable, but also a totally blank slate for designers who wanted to give it meaning. It scored the highest in memorability, but the lowest in meaningfulness. Participants were asked to guess the meaning of each one, which was used to assign each one a “meaningfulness score.” A week later, the same participants were shown those original 24 symbols, plus 36 more and asked to identify which symbols they remembered seeing before.Īmong the six competing biohazard designs, one stood out. Peanut, the Texaco star, the Shell Oil symbol, the Red Cross, even a swastika. There were six newly-designed biohazard markers, and 18 common symbols - things like Mr. He and his team showed a set of 24 symbols to 300 people from 25 American cities. Those criteria ruled out simple shapes in use at the time, like those from the Navy and Army, and ambiguous symbols, like the snake-and-staff, which has various medicinal associations.Ĭharles Baldwin, an environmental health engineer at Dow, sought to develop a visual icon fitting the criteria, “that was memorable but meaningless … so we could educate people as to what it means.” Acceptable to groups of varying ethnic backgrounds.Symmetrical, in order to appear identical from all angles.Quickly recognizable and easily recalled.Unique and unambiguous to avoid confusion with other symbols.Striking in form in order to draw immediate attention.So in 1966, a group of engineers and designers at Dow Chemical set out to create the best possible icon for biohazardous materials. The lack of consistency put people at risk of exposure and infection. The Universal Postal Convention used a white staff-and-snake on a violet background. Laboratories at the US Army used an inverted blue triangle. At the time, there was no universal standard for communicating the presence of dangerous biological materials. Designing something that retains its meaning over time is a surprisingly difficult.īack in the early 20th century, there was an urgent need for a new kind of warning symbol. But today? A skull-and-crossbones is associated more with treasure, blockbuster movies, or Halloween than actual danger. It represented death, pirates, and poison. It was once one of the most feared symbols in the world.
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