It’s quite important when designing an icon – an essential class of visual communication – to produce something that is easily and instantly comprehendible. It is necessary to understand and refer to an existing canon of typologies, signs and symbols – acknowledging time is a factor and exploiting a mental shorthand to deliver the message. To achieve this one might draw comparisons or visual simile.
So….presumably when Tesco were designing graphics for their chocolate gateaux, they thought the best way of conveying the message “it is necessary for you to remove this product from the freezer well in advance of eating” was by drawing an analogy between the mildly souring experience of eating a cake not entirely unthawed, and the global crisis of irreversible and disastrous climate change. Good work! I hope they went home early after that brainstorm. Of course, now it makes perfect sense to choose one of the most heart-rending (and overused) images of global warming: a doomed polar bear stranded on a dislodged chunk of it’s dwindling habitat.
At least the bear is smiling. Maybe it’s subliminal. Supermarkets are supposed to be malevolent and unstoppable forces for evil aren’t they? Like Zorg Industries? Perhaps they want us to think of cheap consumer products every time we see a natural disaster on the television. They could use a picture of a wrecked tanker to sell treacle: “directions for use: pour over pancakes in much the same way that this corrosive petrochemical has caked over this turtle breeding ground” or try “4 blade razors – decimate your own Brazilian rainforest”.
If I was ‘in charge’ I would adopt this hilarious symbol below to instruct purchasers to “pre-heat oven to 200 degrees”. Underneath I’d write “(That’s about as hot as a child’s arm on fire)*”:
[*- sorry, that's an outright lie. In an oxygen-rich environment a child's arm would most likely burn at around 1200 - 1500˚C .]
