A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a

graphic Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, ...

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to a considerable extent pictorial in appearance. A pictogram may also be used in subjects such as leisure, tourism, and geography. Pictography is a form of writing which uses representational, pictorial drawings, similarly to cuneiform and, to some extent,

hieroglyphic writing Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

, which also uses drawings as phonetic letters or determinative rhymes. Some pictograms, such as Hazards pictograms, are elements of formal languages. "Pictograph" has a different definition in the field of prehistoric art (which includes recent art by traditional societies), where it means art painted on rock surfaces. This is in comparison to

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

s, where the images are carved or incised. Such images may or may not be considered pictograms in the general sense.

Historical

Early written

symbols A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

were based on pictographs (pictures which resemble what they signify) and ideograms (symbols which represent ideas). Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to adapt such symbols to represent concepts, developing them into

logographic writing systems In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...

. Pictographs are still in use as the main medium of written communication in some non-literate cultures in Africa, the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

, and Oceania. Pictographs are often used as simple, pictorial, representational symbols by most contemporary cultures. Signatures from the Past

Pictographs can be considered an art form, or can be considered a written language and are designated as such in Pre-Columbian art, Native American art, Ancient Mesopotamia and Painting in the Americas before Colonization. One example of many is the Rock art of the Chumash people, part of the Native American history of California. In 2011, UNESCO's World Heritage List added "

Petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

Complexes of the Mongolian Altai, Mongolia" to celebrate the importance of the pictograms engraved in rocks. Some scientists in the field of neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology, such as Mario Christian Meyer, are studying the symbolic meaning of indigenous pictograms and petroglyphs, aiming to create new ways of communication between native people and modern scientists to safeguard and valorize their cultural diversity.

Modern uses

An early modern example of the extensive use of pictographs may be seen in the map in the London suburban timetables of the London and North Eastern Railway, 1936–1947, designed by George Dow, in which a variety of pictographs was used to indicate facilities available at or near each station. Pictographs remain in common use today, serving as pictorial, representational

sign A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or me ...

s, instructions, or statistical diagrams. Because of their graphical nature and fairly realistic style, they are widely used to indicate public toilets, or places such as airports and train stations. Because they are a concise way to communicate a concept to people who speak many different languages, pictograms have also been used extensively at the

Olympics The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

since 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, designed by Masaru Katsumi, and are redesigned for each set of games. Pictographic writing as a modernist poetic technique is credited to

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

, though French

surrealists Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

credit the Pacific Northwest American Indians of Alaska who introduced writing, via totem poles, to

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. Contemporary artist Xu Bing created Book from the Ground, a universal language made up of pictograms collected from around the world. A Book from the Ground chat program has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Pictograms are used in many areas of modern life for commodity purposes, often as a formal language (see the In mathematics section).

In mathematics

In statistics, pictograms are charts in which icons represent numbers to make it more interesting and easier to understand. A key is often included to indicate what each icon represents. All icons must be of the same size, but a fraction of an icon can be used to show the respective fraction of that amount. For example, the following table: can be graphed as follows: Key: Email Silk

= 10 letters As the values are rounded to the nearest 5 letters, the second icon on Tuesday is the left half of the original.

Standardization

Pictographs can often transcend languages in that they can communicate to speakers of a number of tongues and language families equally effectively, even if the languages and cultures are completely different. This is why road signs and similar pictographic material are often applied as global standards expected to be understood by nearly all. A standard set of pictographs was defined in the

international standard international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International Or ...

ISO 7001 ISO 7001 ("public information symbols") is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization that defines a set of pictograms and symbols for public information. The latest version, ISO 7001:2007, was published in Novembe ...

: Public Information Symbols''. Other common sets of pictographs are the

laundry symbols A laundry symbol, also called a care symbol, is a pictogram indicating the manufacturer's suggestions as to methods of washing, drying, dry-cleaning and ironing clothing. Such symbols are written on labels, known as care labels or care tags, ...

used on clothing tags and the chemical hazard symbols as standardized by the GHS system. Pictograms have been popularized in use on the

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

and in software, better known as " icons" displayed on a computer screen in order to help user navigate a computer system or mobile device. File:GreatGalleryedit.jpg, Native American Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Horseshoe Canyon,

Canyonlands National Park Canyonlands National Park is an American national park located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their r ...

File:National Park Service sample pictographs.svg, Sample National Park Service pictographs File:Piktograf1.png, Pictograph from 1510 telling a story of coming of

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...

File:Piktogramm Schwimmer an der Muenchner Olympia Schwimmhalle.JPG, This highly influential pictogram design was introduced at the

1972 Munich Olympics The 1972 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad () and commonly known as Munich 1972 (german: München 1972), was an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from 26 August to 11 September 1972. ...

, although pictograms first began to appear in the games at Tokyo in 1964. File:Railway pictograms.jpg,

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

passenger safety pictographs at the end of the platform at

Meols railway station Meols railway station is a station serving the village of Meols, in Merseyside, England. It lies on the West Kirby branch of the Wirral Line, part of the Merseyrail network. History Meols was one of the original stations on the Hoylake Rail ...

File:Water,Rabbit,Deer.jpg, Water, rabbit, deer pictographs on a replica of an Aztec

Stone of the Sun The Aztec sun stone ( es, Piedra del Sol) is a late post-classic Mexica sculpture housed in the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, and is perhaps the most famous work of Mexica sculpture. It measures in diameter and thick, and weig ...

Notes

References

* Reed, Ishmael (2003). ''From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002'', Ishmael Reed, ed. .

External links

Pictogram & Communication: About 1,500 practical pictograms based on Design principles of pictorial symbols for communication support(JIS T 0103:2005)CAPL:The Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon, photographic illustrations of objects for multiple languagesPictogram Encyclopedia, The collection site of more than 500 pictograms, Pictograms are categorized, and easy to find unique pictogramPictopen
- Modern Pictographic Writing
NounProject
- Free Pictograms under open licences
Modern Pictograms
- Explore word and pictogram relationships
Wolfram, Alpha
- Number to pictogram translator
icons
- download free icons for commercial and non commercial uses {{Authority control Infographics Rock art * Pre-Columbian art Indigenous art History of communication Proto-writing Statistical charts and diagrams