41–50 of 237 posts
The glass thermometer in 2022 seems a bit like using a 3.5" floppy disk as a save icon, and I don't think it would show up very well on a tiny clothing tag.
i agree with this part of your premise (and also that a thermometer would be hard to read on a tiny tag)
Within a second of seeing the 'improved' ones I spot what is, to my mind at least, an immediate failure - the detail resolution is far too small. It doesn't account for the printing limitations on small fabric tags, never mind the ability of old fogeys such as myself to be able to squint that hard and actually read them. I have no idea even looking on my screen here what the difference between the first three is supp…
Laundry symbols make no sense... So let's get rid of them! Let's simply make all clothes compatible with a regular wash and tumble dry process. If the clothes use a dye that isn't waterproof, use a different dye. If the fabric is too fragile to withstand spinning, use a stronger fabric. If a material can't withstand the heat of a dryer, use better material. Material science has come so far in the past 100 years that…
Because the symbols need to be looked up we shouldn't use silk any more??
Laundry symbols make no sense... So let's get rid of them! Let's simply make all clothes compatible with a regular wash and tumble dry process. If the clothes use a dye that isn't waterproof, use a different dye. If the fabric is too fragile to withstand spinning, use a stronger fabric. If a material can't withstand the heat of a dryer, use better material. Material science has come so far in the past 100 years that…
The originals are too abstract. Unless you memorise them you basically have to look them up every time. Which is probably why most clothes also have English text telling you what to do on the label.
The new ones obviously have too small details to print on a typical label but I think that could be fixed fairly easily.
It’s a decent start, but without testing, there’s no evidence that these icons are any better than the originals. I’m not sure that they even meets the authors own objectives — there are more small details that are harder to resolve at small sizes and likely would be harder to print clearly. They also aren’t any more “googleable” than the originals. Lastly, they also assume that users are familiar with front loading…
Agreed. I wonder whether something like a QR code that takes you to a page with instructions is more simple as a solution. Hook that up to a smart washing machine, and it will set the appropriate instructions, or tell you if you have an incompatible load. All that said, I've been ignoring the labels for years, and never had a problem.
Speaking of bad design, who thought it was a good idea to blink the labels in the animation, immediately after saying half of people asked knew none of the symbols?
One must remember that these are international symbols and the cultural context you bring to interpretation is different from another’s.