It's quite remarkable how isolated from the world the people named in that document seem to be. It is as if they had never travelled anywhere outside the US before starting the project. Or if they had they had been stunningly unobservant.
McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
151–160 of 164 posts
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#152Except for calories, I would not be able to understand what means the information on nutrient icons without having the corresponding word next to it.
From TFA: > “We realize that some of the visuals may not already be strongly linked in consumer minds to the nutrient they are meant to depict in all markets.” > “We intend to promote understanding of the images through supporting materials in Europe, from web sites to images explained on tray liners and via in-store displays,” ... > “After repeated exposure to these images, customers should eventually grasp their me…
This is beyond stupid. Why use all the effort to explain the icons, when simply using a boring text suffices.
It almost seems like they purposely don't want consumers to understand the information.
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there's an opportunity cost. You pay a whole interdisciplinary committee to sit on their asses thinking about it for n weeks (I don't even want to know how long it took). You could take that money and use it on a million other things that would result in a larger reduction of people-getting-hurt.
What would that be? Those million other things that prevent people 1000, 2000, 5000 years from now from getting hurt? A good warning seems like a great idea, and low cost, high impact. Problem is, no language has lasted for 10,000 years.
Lightning bolts seems like the best thing to use. They're scary and deadly.
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? Go eat some grass if it's the same.
That is the strategy behind eating oatmeal or rice instead of bread.
Yea. It's still weird as hell to call rice a vegetable as if that's meaningful. Doubly weird to consider rice's vegetable-ness as leading to its carbness.
Most of the rice plant is just fiber, nutritiously.
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#155Everywhere outside of McDonald's, the only obvious icon for "fat" would be a burger.
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Y'all down-voting this but it's true. Of course McDonalds is in an excellent position to slowly give these symbols meaning through constant exposure, but inherently the way they're designed does not convey anything at all. They might as well have just used colours or shapes.
Exactly but what shapes? How about a cross, a six pointed star and a crescent? They are simple and distinctive...
I'm thinking the swastika is due for reinterpretation. Let's make it mean "fat".
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why not just snap to simplified Chinese? You'd get a billion person headstart and the ideograms are probably just as arbitrary.
protein: 蛋白 fat: 脂肪 salt: 盐 carbohydrate: 糖类 calorie: 千卡 I dunno...
I just checked a bag of noodles I had lying around, and it uses
protein: 蛋白质, fat: 脂肪, sodium: 钠, carbohydrates: 碳水化合物, energy content: 能量 (measured in kJ: 千焦)
So there is the additional problem of a. measuring different things (or using different units) and b. using different words to mean the same things.
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
A heretical opinion, but one I agree with. I feel like the success of iOS and Android proves that the world of windows and icons from desktop computers was fine for nerds but ultimately a failure for mainstream use. hell, just look at fabric instruction icons… https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/6b/b9/a06bb91bc...
The only people who feel it's heretical are designers with too little experience. Very few people would insist these icons were good design: http://i.imgur.com/W6pWibe.png Unlabeled icons are an antipattern in all but a handful of cases.
What you saw isn't actually bad, because - unlike the current icon storm on mobile - each icon on that screenshot has a tooltip. Hovering a mouse over a button and waiting for a tooltip is one of the most basic computer use skills. And if you have that, then icons suddenly have a better value proposition.
Not that I personally like icons. I feel I can pattern-match a word faster than I can pattern-match an icon.
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#159I don't see a good explanation here about why they need to have a universal set of icons. If they allowed a greater quantity of icons that work better for each region, why wouldn't this simply be better?
Not to mention the fact that there are regulations and standards that prescribe how this information needs to be displayed in many places. For example, this wouldn't meet the standards for nutritional information in Australia (we have a standardidised table form).
Re: McDonald’s Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf]
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
protein: 蛋白 fat: 脂肪 salt: 盐 carbohydrate: 糖类 calorie: 千卡 I dunno...
I just checked a bag of noodles I had lying around, and it uses protein: 蛋白质, fat: 脂肪, sodium: 钠, carbohydrates: 碳水化合物, energy content: 能量 (measured in kJ: 千焦) So there is the additional problem of a. measuring different things (or using different units) and b. using different words to mean the same things.
I think the important question is whether a Chinese reader would understand the character脂 (also 'fat') on its own without the whole phrase, the way we would understand 'carb' or 'cal'.