US troops, synthetic design and war

by gabriela on 13/01/2011

You’re in a foreign country. You’re stripped of means of communication. You need to survive. What do you do? You rely on the only true universal language: pictograms.

Click here for high-res photo

Click here for high-res photo

Concepts any John Doe needs to convey: date, time, water, food, lodging.

Concepts the US Army needs to convey: means of identification, ambush, booby traps, hideouts, weapons, destruction, pullover, surrender + date, time, water, food, lodging.

It exemplifies analytic and synthetic thinking at its best, no?

This guide was made by Kwikpoint.  A visual translator company that works with designers, linguists and diplomats to replace “pounds-or kilos-of language dictionaries and phrase books” with images. Javier Cañada bought this sample in 2004, at the height of  the Iraq War.

There are 3 comments in this article:

  1. 13/01/2011DamagedGoods says:

    A similar example: an “icon” book for travellers that doesn’t speak the country language:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/damagedgoods2006/5352180115/

    I think the original idea comes from this book:

    http://amzn.to/fXenbi

  2. 14/01/2011Tweets that mention US troops, synthetic design and war - THE COSMONAUTS -- Topsy.com says:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Javier Cañada. Javier Cañada said: US troops, synthetic design and war: http://www.vostok.es/blog/us-troops-synthetic-design-and-war [...]

  3. 14/01/2011Gabriela Lendo says:

    true!

    And when talking about pictographic language one must never forget to mention Otto and Marie Neurath’s Isotype project and, of course, Otl Aicher’s signs for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

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