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McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

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Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#91

Post by salgernon »

Whenever issues like this come up, I like to refer to the WIPP report on how to identify waste containment plants for 10,000 years.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%...

In the end, it was determined that there was no guarantee that a re-established civilization could grasp what we were trying to say, and that perhaps just an area earning a reputation as cursed, via attribution of visitors, would be the best deterrent.

Therefore, I would submit: "These are not foods of honor. No highly held nutritional facts are described here. Nothing valued is here."

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#92

Post by bitwize »

jhbadger wrote: post #55
skookumchuck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After repeated exposure to these words, customers should eventually grasp their meaning, with or without printed translations next to them.

Yeah -- think about a lot of commonly accepted icons, like for nuclear radiation or biohazards. Or even the weird icons like those for "pause" and "record" on media devices -- these aren't intuitive icons, we've just gotten used to them.

The media playback icons were supposedly inspired by Wassily Kandinsky.

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#95

Post by pix64 »

skrause wrote: post #90
owenversteeg wrote: post #85

Okay, I've got a crazy idea. Why not create a combination of words that expresses the thing, instead of these very weird and incomprehensible-at-first-glance icons? For example, for proteins: the word "protein" is understandable in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek and Swedish. The Russian "belok" should be understandable to Polish and Russian speakers, and the Dutch "eiwitten" should be understand…

As a German I would not understand "eiwitten" as "Eiweiß". However, the word "Protein" is also used in Germany as a regular alternative to "Eiweiß".

Literally "Egg White"

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#96

Post by s_kilk »

jhbadger wrote: post #55
skookumchuck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After repeated exposure to these words, customers should eventually grasp their meaning, with or without printed translations next to them.

Yeah -- think about a lot of commonly accepted icons, like for nuclear radiation or biohazards. Or even the weird icons like those for "pause" and "record" on media devices -- these aren't intuitive icons, we've just gotten used to them.

Hmm, both Biohazard and Radiation symbols were chosen because they look (at least somewhat) ugly and dangerous even to the unfamiliar.

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#97

Post by skookumchuck »

microcolonel wrote: post #84
skookumchuck wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the icons McDonald's chose as their final ones had any meaning to me without a translation chart. How is that different from learning what a word means? Didn't anyone at McDonald's dare to question the basic idea of this?

Are you saying it would be better to just teach their customers the English words for these things? Esperanto? I mean, I might probably agree with that, but I don't know that the customers would.

> Are you saying it would be better to just teach their customers the English words for these things?

Yes. It's the same amount of teaching and learning. Actually, it's probably less of both, because:

1. A fair fraction (most?) of the customers would already know some english, whereas zero know what those icons mean.

2. Knowledge of english words is valuable to anyone and is transferable to other domains. Knowledge of McDonald's icons is useless outside of McDonald's.

3. Deciphering english is a trivial peck at an online dictionary. Whatcha gonna do about an icon?

English words are creeping in everywhere anyway.

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#98

Post by pix64 »

SwetDrems wrote: post #47

I frequently travel to non-English speaking countries and am conscious of what I ingest - the attempt to standardize nutrition labeling on an international scale is a great effort! At this point, no, I don't know what the symbols mean without a legend, but I'm sure at some point in time, not everyone knew that a red octagon on a post means stop.

Learning a few words even if you can't speak them is pretty damn simple.

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#99

Post by breadbox »

salgernon wrote: post #91

Whenever issues like this come up, I like to refer to the WIPP report on how to identify waste containment plants for 10,000 years. http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%... In the end, it was determined that there was no guarantee that a re-established civilization could grasp what we were trying to say, and that perhaps just an area earning a reputation as cursed, via attribution of visitors,…

If you found that article interesting, you might want to read Gregory Benford's "Deep Time" (978-0380975372). Benford was part of the same panel (though in a different group), and the first half of the book is in-depth discussion of the various aspects of the problem that they had to consider.

Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]

#100

Post by Retric »

microcolonel wrote: post #83
Retric wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I found most interesting was not the rather meaningless icon choices, but the incredibly deceptive dotted line seen on page 12. It's basically anchoring people in a meaningless way such that not everything seems bad. Without the line it's like 50% more sodium relative to the number of calories I am eating. That's terrible. With the line ehh, I guess everything looks ok.

Is the dotted line deceptive? It just seems like a ⅓DV line (for the large number of people who eat three meals in a day), which clearly shows you that this meal is high in sodium, so should be accompanied with other meals which are lower in sodium.

You are falling for the framing. If something is 28% of your DV worth of calories it's not a meal. The line makes it seem that as long as each 'bad' item is under the line it's ok.

Sure the fries are over it, but the burger only 1/2 way their so that's probably ok.

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