Toolbox—Part 2
A Visual Communication Tool and a Fun Game!
Communicating with Visuals
I think icons are pretty fantastic, but there are billions—maybe trillions—all around the internet. How do you pick visuals that reflect the message you want to communicate, and how will they be received?
I stumbled upon a cool YouTube video recently from 20191. It outlined a pretty amazing case study for iconography, and we built the data set! If you played the game Quick, Draw! from Google, you helped their neural network understand human drawings.
The secondary insight from this data set is how it can quickly tell you what icons and words say to people on a macro scale. There are 50 million individual sketches of different concepts—from aircraft carriers to zigzags—all drawn by people. If you want to frame a concept about your business, writing, game, or art, you could sketch out your ideas and come to this website to see how they reflect what people commonly see when they think of the ideas you are using!
As you click through the different concepts, you begin to see patterns take shape (literally). One of the other compelling parts of this warehouse of drawings is that it shows them drawn out in real-time. The game only gives 20 seconds to complete a drawing, and the drawings ‘play back’ in GIF form to show how people made their work.
You can always play the game yourself (on your phone or computer), as it’s quite addictive and fun. You would be lending your own perspective to this sketchbook, Rosetta Stone.
I know the next time I work on a logo, icon, or other design, this will be one of my first places to come to for inspiration. If you want to communicate clearly, this is a FREE public focus group!
ah… a simpler time.