Iconography & Symbolism: Guidelines for Life?
Before we had language we had pictures.
Man is the great communicator, a master storyteller. And it is this which puts us apart from other creatures with whom we share this planet. We know that other species communicate to each other in various forms; the waggle dance of the bee, the haunting siren of whale song, the low frequency rumbling of “elephant talk”. Recent research even suggests that trees have a complex form of communicating with each other (or more accurately, a method of transmitting information) through the fungal network of the “wood wide web”. However no other species has mastered and fine tuned the art of language and communication in all our forms of media quite like the human being.
Our communication has existed in some form or another since early humans appeared on the Earth. In disorganised and idiosyncratic sets of signs and symbols that could have meant something different to each human that encountered them. However it was around three million years after humanity’s emergence, around the year 30,000 BC, that communication appeared to take a more intentional and focussed format. Cave paintings, the most well known form of primitive communication, were created by homo sapiens who first appeared around 130,000BC. It took us a few million years to learn the artistic skills and the oldest cave painting ever discovered - a magnificent life size rendering of an indigenous warty pig - is 45,500 years old, and was recently discovered on an Indonesian island.
Life-sized image of a wild pig discovered in 2017 inside the Leang Tedongnge cave is estimated to be at least 45,500 years old. Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/14/worlds-oldest-known-cave-painting-found-in-indonesias-sulawesi
Using stones, coloured minerals, foraged berries, animal blood, and the juice of various fruits, these cave paintings depict early life and give us an insight into the psyche of early man.
Some researchers also believe that the act of creating these cave paintings over thousands of years helped to kick start a new way of thinking, referred to as “symbolic thinking”, that may have set the stage for human language to develop.
Aside from their decorative qualities, the true “purpose” of these cave paintings are still being debated to this day. However one popular theory states that these primitive depictions were used as a kind of instruction manual for other cave dwellers; telling their fellow humans which animals were safe to eat, possibly warning which to avoid, and documenting their hunt and expressing their adventures.
To me, it makes sense that we humans have some innate and deeply evolved sense of respect for the icon and the symbol. Icons, illustrations, graphic representations possess a permanence that the spoken word lacks, so if these primitive colourful shapes and depictions acted as an early teacher, an instruction manual on how to survive, and a way to communicate a great deal of information quickly and nonverbally, it’s only reasonable to assume that we humans assign authority and weight to the symbols that have accompanied our journey and evolution through the ages. And these symbols have evolved with us.
The technology and techniques may have advanced but we still follow our instincts to rely on basic symbols and iconography, now in the form of logos and brands, to tell us where to find food, wayfinding and navigating through the modern day hunter-gather environment of the shopping aisle, and identify recognisable marks and icons that tell us what is safe to eat and what we “need” to survive and thrive.
“We still follow our instincts to rely on basic symbols and iconography, now in the form of logos and brands, to tell us where to find food, wayfinding and navigating through the modern day hunter-gather environment of the shopping aisle.”
Throughout our history symbols have been used to represent tribes of people, nations, causes and movements. Some have innate meaning that we immediately understand, like a graphic illustration of a bird or a flower, whereas more abstract shapes have meaning poured into them as they come to represent the idea that they stand for. Indeed there is no intrinsic difference between the swastika and the peace symbol, for they are both single colour geometric shapes but the causes and the ideologies these symbols have come to represent could not be further apart. The gut reaction we have when seeing these symbols tell us a lot about how powerfully we associate meanings and actions with them.
The climate activist group Extinction Rebellion is a great example of a powerful logo capturing the essence of a movement,
A symbol alone cannot begin a movement that changes history, however it does give it a tangible identity that people come to recognise and associate with. The symbol creates a repeatable mark that becomes shorthand for all the values it represents.
Symbols, icons, and logos are a method of communication that’s as old as time. And they’re powerful tools that can be harnessed for good or ill.
So use them wisely.
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