I’m a native Chinese speaker. The Chinese characters have evolved immensely since its pictorial beginning. So writing the headlines in modern Chinese characters wouldn’t look like pictures. But the wonderful thing about it is, even if one has never seen a particular character before, one can probably figure the rough meaning of it from the way the character is being formed, thanks to its pictorial origins. It’s a very beautiful language and I agree we should all learn it.

I’m not sure what happened with the pictogram headlines after three years since it was launched, but it sure made me smile today. :)

Nice take on it. What I found out though while trying to do this was that as headlines are already heavily condensed fragments, sometimes it can be very difficult to shrink it down even more. Alot of the time nearly all words are needed to make any sense of it. Thanks for your input.

Jeff,

Wondering if the Chinese can just write headlines like we would write them, but they look like pictures anyway?

Rami,

Nice find. Just wondering how the icons would scale for use on projection areas and large screen displays. Looks a little to rich I think for that. I could be wrong?

Absolutely, Dave. Plenty of potential, and I think Cara’s comment above points in the right direction. I hope you didn’t get the idea that I’m completely dismissing what you’re doing. I think it’s very worthwhile, and I may not have indicated that clearly enough.

Some time ago, I commented here about the pictographic nature of the Chinese language. Maybe we should learn Chinese! It’s really almost exactly what you’re talking about, plus what Cara is saying, plus about a thousand years of functional evolution. So if we subtracted that thousand years and put it in a modern global context …

I think it would be great to get input from someone who is fluent in Chinese, a student of Chinese calligraphy, and understands where you’re going with this. Is any such person reading this?

The plunger and the other symbols up there were just quick sketches that I outlined in Illustrator as an experiment. Some are more immediately recognisable than others I admit, but hopefully having a more thought out symbol, and then using the adjacent symbols to help decipher the headline, users will be able to read/see it.

Some symbols work better than others. Animals for example should be a perfect subject for a pictogram. A cow is a cow no matter what country you’re from. Same for a lion, a tiger, or a rhino. So I think it has some potential.

Plus I think there’s a benefit to having a tricky pictogram in the middle of the headline. For one if there’s a few people standing around trying to work it out then it becomes a common talking point, and forces users to interact to solve it. Two heads, as it were.