I recently visited the Helsinki Design Museum where I saw the work of Tomi Leppänen: "Tauko Paus Pause". This conceptual art exhibit guides the visitors through the language of common symbols.

The visit inspired me to create my own series of symbols, either shown at the exhibit (period, dot dot dot, progress, score) or not (wave, question mark, bracket, slash, division, plus / minus). In my compositions, I used a treatment similar to that in my other works on typography (see 3D Dreamy Aerial Typography or Kidag Font 3D).

The photo grid below shows my series of symbols. The human figure in each is meant to provoke both a sense of gigantic scale and a sense of space and depth. That small addition (literally), has a profound impact on our perception of the symbol. The short text after each image is asking a question that illustrates some of the many meanings these symbols can have (polysemy is the capacity of a word or symbol to convey different meanings). Polysemy reminds us that even the simplest signs and symbols carry a lot of subtlety and their true meaning is usually found through the context they appear in.

A wave... opportunity or passiveness? An occasion to rise, or one to go with the flow?

Period: the end, or a new beginning?  

Question mark: shows an open mind, trying to understand an idea, a fact, a person, or shows fear of facing the truth, hiding behind questions?

Division: fairness and equal shares, or unreconcilable differences?

Plusses and minuses: rigorous accounting, or a judgment?

Slash: an alternate option, or a ratio?

Square brackets: the beginning and the end of an interval, an ellipse or a reference?

The score: the empty score, like the empty page, is awaiting our minds' creations. We fill it to bring our creations from the realm of ideas into the physical world.

Progress bar: a positive gain towards a desirable goal, or getting closer to a crushing limit?

Dot, dot, dot: indecisiveness, or ...