Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Are icons the new language?

I was just recently reading that Starbucks has revised its Mermaid logo and are planning to use it without the Starbucks name or the word "coffee" as the company is seeking to expand its product offering beyond coffee. Nifty idea in some respects, but it got me to thinking:

Is the brand world moving towards a word-less language? Are we regressing to early days of mankind when symbols were the primary means of communication?

Case in point: the Nike swoosh. I cannot even remember the last time I saw the word "Nike". Icons on most car's dashboards no longer have words next to them. The oil can with the drop signifies "oil change" or "low oil", which is fairly obvious, but in that snowstorm a few weeks ago I saw an icon pop up on my dashboard and scrambled to find the car manual before learning it meant "low tire pressure." The icon looked nothing like a flat tire, by the way.

Which makes me wonder this: Do we ever see a time when in the world of healthcare and pharmaceuticals would an icon for a drug or medical device ever become so "iconographic" that the product would stop using it's brand name? It's kind of funny to think about it, isn't it?

So I ask this question: Do we ever see a time in the future where a healthcare brand is so iconographic that it can drop it's brand name and just use its icon? What do you think?

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