When everyday symbols become art

When everyday symbols become art The IEC power symbol at MoMA Janice Blondeau

It's not every day that the work of the IEC enters the realms of visual art. The IEC 60417-5009 power symbol is an exception. It is being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of the "This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good" exhibition.

Design in the digital age According to MoMA, the exhibition takes its title from British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, who lit up the stadium at the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony with a simple tweet: This Is for Everyone.

One of the most popular of many The power symbol, or more correctly the standby button, is one of the most popular graphic symbols for use on equipment, enjoying global renown.

As of March 2015, there are now 1272 standardized graphical symbols from the IEC and ISO which form a multilingual Dictionary of graphical symbols, in English, French and Japanese. It is available at www.graphical-symbols.info.

Graphical symbols on equipment IEC Subcommittee (SC) 3C: Graphical symbols for use on equipment, prepares International Standards regarding methods and rules graphical symbols for the human interaction with equipment, including basic design rules for graphical symbols and the design of graphical symbols for particular applications.

Early beginnings TC 3 is one of the first Technical Committees created by IEC. In the field of installations, systems and product engineering TC 3 deals with information structures, documentation and document content, including graphical symbols as well as graphical symbols for use on equipment.

About the exhibition Is design in the digital age - so often simply assumed to be for the greater good - truly for everyone? From initial exploratory experiments to complex, and often contested, hybrid digital-analog states, all the way to universal designs, This Is for Everyone explores this question with works from MoMA's collection that celebrate the promise - and occasional flipside - of contemporary design. The exhibition runs until the end of January 2016 in the Architecture and Design Galleries, at MOMA, New York.

LINK:	http://www.iec.ch/etech/2015/etech_0315/wld-2.htm...
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