The Noun Project is excited to host an Iconathon during SXSW with (mt) Media Temple!

(mt) Media Temple has been an essential partner of The Noun Project ever since we launched.  We are thrilled they’ve decided to sponsor a fun 2-hour workshop to create a new visual language around inspiration and creativity.  What does it feel like when you get that moment of inspiration?  How would you visually communicate that feeling in a simple pictogram?  We’ll be working together to create a new set of icons to illuminate the world of “Ideas.” 

For more than 15 years, (mt) Media Temple has been helping people bring their big ideas to life. In that time they’ve witnessed a lot of light-bulb-over-the-head, “a-ha!” moments. Together we’re fascinated by the challenge of illustrating that moment and that feeling.  The symbols created during this workshop will be added to The Noun Project as public domain for anyone to use.

So if you have an interest in art, design, or iconography—or good ideas, or beer, for that matter—and you’re planning on being in Austin on March 11th, come join us! No design or art skills needed, Iconathons are meant to engage everyone in the design process so don’t be shy.

Event Details:
Monday, March 11, 2013
6:00pm-8:00pm
Paste Lounge at The Blackheart
86 Rainey St., Austin, TX 78701
Seating is limited—RSVP for free tickets

Any organization whether it be a sports team, business, or family needs a set of values or a core ethos that guides and influences their decisions. Clearly defining these values is hard to do, but great things can happen when companies know what they stand for.  One company like this is MailChimp. They value happiness and they’re showing that by sponsoring a collection of 30 free beautiful “happiness” icons.  These fun symbols will make a great addition to your next creative project.  Please download, they’re sure to make you smile!

Every day countless businesses across the country take extra time and effort to minimize the impact their operations have on the environment.  One of the areas in which a lot of progress is being made is in Organics Recycling. Organics recycling includes both traditional composting, as well as innovative programs such as “Food-to-People,” in which edible food is donated to people in need, and “Food-to-Livestock,” in which organic waste is sent to local farmers for hog-feed. Food scraps and food-soiled paper make up a ¼ of our garbage, creating methane (a potent greenhouse gas) when landfilled.  Recycling these organics reduces garbage in our landfills, creates valuable resources and provides economic development opportunities.

We want to make it easier for anyone to know which restaurants and businesses go that extra mile to make our world better.  We believe if people know which restaurants donate their food scraps to a local food shelter, or what businesses recycled their organics by participating in a local composting program, they will choose those businesses over others.  By recognizing these businesses for their efforts, we hope to encourage others to participate in cutting down their waste.

To get the ball rolling, we’ve teamed up with Minneapolis’ Hennepin County Environmental Services to host an Iconathon design workshop with the goal of creating a badge system that can be displayed on storefronts across the city.   These “badges of honor” will be similar in nature to the Yelp or Zagat rating stickers that can be seen on restaurants around the country.  The Iconathon will be held on Sunday, March 24th as part of University of Minnesota College of Design’s Public Interest Design Week.  

We’ve chosen Hennepin County as our partner in this because they have been at the forefront of the organics recycling movement.  The county has assisted businesses, schools and cities in setting up organics recycling programs, including providing a grant to the City of Minneapolis for a pilot curbside organics recycling program in the Linden Hills neighborhood. Currently, about 150 businesses in the county, such as Target, MSP Airport and IKEA, as well as numerous schools and colleges, participate in organics recycling.

When the recycling movement began in the early 1970’s, a 23-year-old college student Gary Anderson created the now universally recognized recycling symbol that has since had a tremendous effect on our environment.  Our goal is to engage the design community and civic activists to create new “badges of honor” to encourage more recycling programs around the world.  The icons created during the Iconathon will be released into the public domain to be used by anyone interested in engaging in recycling programs.

The Organics Recycling Iconathon is sponsored by the University of Minnesota College of Design, PublicInterestDesign.org and The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Event Details:

When: Sunday, March 24th from 10:30am to 3:30pm

Where: University of Minnesota, College of Design, Rapson Hall at 89 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

RSVP: Seating is limited, RSVP for free tickets.

Yelp sticker photo taken by Robyn Lee. 

The Noun Project has teamed up with ProPublica and Hacks/Hackers NYC in organizing an Iconathon to create a new visual language around Investigative Journalism.  This Iconathon will be held at The New York Times building on Saturday, February 23rd, and is sponsored by Knight-Mozilla OpenNews and The New York Times.

We’ll be creating symbols for concepts in watchdog journalism such as public records, on-the-record sources, corporate malfeasance, and illustrating the ways power may be abused in both the public and private sectors.  The icons created will be released into the public domain to be used in news applications and interactives, as well as to illustrate reporting series, Web site topic pages, and mobile applications.

The Iconathon will kick off with presentations on tech & investigative journalism by Scott Klein - editor of News Applications at ProPublica, and Matthew Ericson - deputy graphics director at The New York Times.  “A new set of icons for news will help graphics editors and news application developers use graphical shorthand in place of lengthy explanation — the proverbial thousand words — and to tell meaningful and impactful stories more gracefully and graphically” - said Scott Klein.

Event Details:

When: Saturday, February 23rd from 10:30am to 4:00pm
Where: The New York Times building at 620 8th Avenue, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019
RSVP: Seating is limited, RSVP for free tickets.

The Noun Project organizes Iconathons to engage the general public in the design process, so no design or art skills are necessary - all are welcome to participate!

According to Chrys Wu of Hacks/Hackers NYC “Investigative journalism is about explaining complicated concepts and revealing systemic problems. If we can do that visually, it can help readers better understand the reported stories.”  We’re honored to help out in such an important endeavor.

*Detective icon is by Simon Child.

The Noun Project is teaming up with The LAB Miami for an Iconathon to create public domain symbols for civic hackers.

This Iconathon will bring together designers, hackers, students and civic-minded Miami residents for a collaborative workshop to design symbols for public interest. The Noun Project is working with Code for America’s Brigade to identify which symbols are frequently needed by civic hackers when developing new civic apps and websites. The Brigade is an organizing force for local civic engagement - a national network of “civic hackers” who contribute their skills and time to better their communities by way of technology.

The workshop will be held at The LAB Miami’s newly opened collaborative space in the Wynwood Art District.  The LAB’s campus is a dynamic environment for social innovation and entrepreneurship that includes tech startups, programmers, designers, investors, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, artists and academics.

Event Details:

When: Saturday, February 16th from 10:30am to 3:30pm
Where: The LAB Miami at 400 NW 26th Street, Miami FL 33127
RSVP: Seating is limited, RSVP for free tickets.

The Civic Hacker Iconathon is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

*Lab Rat image courtesy of The LAB Miami.

We love working with amazing companies, which is one of the many reasons we chose Media Temple as our web hosting service.  Media Temple’s focus on community and customer service is inspiring.  A perfect example of this sense of community is their Made on (mt) video series, through which they tell the stories behind the inspiring small businesses and brands that live on their servers.  We were lucky enough to be the latest installment in the series and to share our story and vision through this video. 

Thanks again (mt)!

(mt) Client Showcase: The Noun Project from (mt) Media Temple on Vimeo.

How do you tell a Russian, a Guatemalan and a Cambodian the forest in which they are harvesting greens can be a dangerous place? With words, maybe. With images? Definitely.  Luis Prado, a member of The Noun Project community, tells us how he used symbols to visually communicate vital information for the Department of Natural Resources:

In Washington State, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages state trust lands that earn revenue to build public schools and universities, and much more. Some are forestlands selected for harvesting specialized forest products like salal and ferns, popular in the floral industry. ‘Brush harvesters’ get a permit, and flock to the forest where pretty butterflies are not the only inhabitants. Hunters go there too—they target-shoot and they hunt various animals during several hunting seasons. Logging trucks drive on narrow roads year-round.

Concerned about harvester safety, DNR’s Law Enforcement called upon our DNR Communications & Outreach team for help. Safety was paramount, and harvester visibility in the forest was a key issue. Brush harvesters wearing warm dark clothing were not easily distinguished from the trees and shadows of the forest. We needed to communicate key safety concepts and harvesting rules basics to harvesters from diverse cultural origins, many of whom do not speak English. 

Perhaps a cliché, but true nonetheless: an image (and an icon) is worth a thousand words. We needed simple designs to communicate complex concepts. And what better to communicate this than designing with recognizable iconography? The Noun Project to the rescue. 

In choosing or developing icons we tried not to use images that may be misinterpreted or offensive to people from various cultures. As an example, a happy face was a better choice than a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons.

The materials produced include an accordion-like booklet that fits into a pocket with one side showing key messages, and the other side displaying an attention grabbing “Workers in forest” text that can be posted on the back window of the harvester’s van to let other forest visitors know of their presence. The outreach effort also includes metal signs for entry points into forest roads, and posters for educating brush harvesters about the need of wearing bright-colored clothes, purchasing necessary permits, and following the rules. In some panels, a translation to Spanish and Cambodian Khmer was included.

Credits

Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Communications & Outreach: Design by Luis Prado. Editors: Jane Chavey, Jennifer Arnold; Larry Raedel, DNR Law Enforcement Chief. 

Icons from The Noun Project: Harvester, van and logging truck icons designed by Luis Prado/DNR; Hand icon by Øystein W. Arbo; Trash by Roger Cook, Don Shanosky, Riley Shaw; Open Hands icon collaboration by Jack Biesek, Gladys Brenner, Margaret Faye, Healther Merrifield, Kate Keating, Wendy Olmstead, Todd Pierce, Jamie Cowgill & Jim Bolek. Happy & Sad Face icons by Tobias F. Wolf. 

A few months ago we saw a fascinating image of Noun symbols etched on wooden tiles.  Our interest was piqued even further when we found out Noel Wilson, an Industrial Engineer at Catapult Design, was using these symbols to communicate about water in rural Indian villages. 

Catapult Design is a non-profit design firm providing engineering and implementation support to the thousands of organizations in need of technologies or products capable of igniting social change.  Their mission is to develop and implement human-centered products to help the world’s population that lacks access to life’s basic needs.

We reached out to Noel to find out more about how Catapult is using the symbols from the collection.

by Noel Wilson

Catapult Design first tapped The Noun Project resources when making a research tool for a project investigating water access and use in rural India. I needed to get an understanding of symbolic literacy in Rajasthan villages. I etched a series of icons onto interlocking wooden tiles (some of them gleaned from The Noun Project) and intentionally left a lot of tiles blank. In each village we visited in Rajasthan, I asked people to experiment with the tiles in 3 ways: first, I asked people to identify what the icons referred to; then I asked people to explain a story using the tiles; finally, I asked them to draw some tiles of their own. The intention was to experiment with ways of discovering symbolic literacy, as well as use those findings to inform any instructions or guides we would have to make relevant to our water project.

The next time around was much more topical. Literacy Bridge, an organization empowering children and adults with tools for knowledge sharing and literacy learning, contacted us to help them solve an issue with their Talking Book interface. The Talking Book  is an audio computer that shares locally-relevant knowledge and improves literacy in areas with limited access to literature.  Literacy Bridge interacts with communities in Northern Ghana where there is no word for ‘arrow’ in their lexicon. They needed to be able to instruct the user to press a button relative to a spoken instruction. We experimented with a bunch of different icons and shapes, some of them from The Noun Project site, some of them created by us, and a few lifted from other sources. Thanks to the timezone difference between California and Ghana, the feedback loop was quick. While we slept Literacy Bridge would report back the responses they got from the field, we would adapt the icons according to their suggestions, and the next day they would be tested again. We worked our way through icons that had issues working with the spoken instructions of the device, icons that implied too much of a specific task (‘fish’ = food), that had too much potential religious connotation (‘plus’ = cross), or that even had too much local political association (‘umbrella’ &  ‘rooster’ are local Ghanaian political party symbols). We are continuing to help Literacy Bridge achieve an appropriate interface through their piloting stage (they are testing Talking Books in the thousands!).

We plan to continue developing new research games and other design resources, and to continue using The Noun Project to help us when we need the right icon. It’s an excellent resource even if I still cant find an icon for ‘design’ up there (nor an icon for ‘icon’) but I’m hitting my sketchpad to work on it.  

Thanks Noun Project! Keep up the good work!  We will see you at the next Iconathon!

——————–

And here is thanks and attribution to all of The Noun Project icon creators that unknowingly helped us out!

Pavel Pavlov: Thumbs Up/Approve
Stephen James Kennedy: Auto Rickshaw
Roger Cook & Don Shanosky: Baby,  Train, Person , Ground Transport
Nick Levesque: Cooking Pan
Connor Cesa: Water Drop
Mike Endale: Hut, Community
Udaya Kumar:  Rupee
Adrijan Karavdic: Elephant
Gibran Bisio: Paint Can
Edward Boatman, Saul Tannenbaum, Stephen Kennedy, Nikki Snow & Brooke Hamilton: Childrens Library
Valentina Piccione: Tree
Tak Imoto: Leaves
Michal Stassel: Axe
Jeremy Linden: Knifes
Kyle Scott, Roman J. Sokolov: Glasses

Images courtesy of Catapult Design and Literacy Bridge. A version of this post previously appeared on Catapult’s blog.

In October we teamed up with the American Red Cross in Washington D.C. to host an Iconathon around the idea of urban disaster preparedness.  We are happy to announce the concepts generated at the event have been successfully turned into symbols, and are now available for download in the Iconathon Collection. 

It was sobering to think of all the use cases while designing these symbols.  Living in California, the symbol for Earthquake was particularly relevant to us.  The group at the Iconathon thought the best way to communicate this concept was to show the earth cracking, and this crack extending into a building which has been damaged. 

The new symbol for Animal Shelter that we created during the Iconathon could have been helpful to organizations like the ASPCA during the recent Hurricane Sandy.  The animals displayed under the shelter roof can be swapped out or added, depending on if the shelter allows farm or exotic animals, for example.

As natural and human-made disasters continue to be more and more frequent, we look forward to working again with the Red Cross and other relief organizations to create more disaster-specific symbols to help in the most urgent of times.

The Noun Project is very honored to be included in Public Interest Design’s list of the Top 100 National Leaders working at the intersection of design and service.  It is such a privilege to be included among the visionaries we so admire.  

The list features some of our favorite organizations and people we’ve had the pleasure of working with, such as Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America), Jake Barton (Local Projects), Candy Chang (Neighborland), Valerie Casey (The Designers Accord), Heather Fleming (Catapult Design), and Liz Gerber (Design for America). And of course former president Bill Clinton.

We feel very strongly that a visual language that can be understood by all people can help create positive impact around the world.  We look forward to continuing our mission of “creating, sharing, and celebrating the world’s visual language.”

See the full list on the Public Interest Design website.