I had the same conversation with a friend just yesterday. We've seen icons with a down arrow pointing at a hard disk or computer (which also seems to mean export), but the best I've seen is a down arrow pointing into a folder.
As a thought experiment, we wondered what if the world didn't have floppies, and "save" was just invented. What would it look like? We liked the folder/arrow idea, since it's cross-platform, or a folder with a document going in it. Since these days files are not associated with physical storage anywhere near as much, we thought it might be possible to use an icon for the concept of save rather than a symbol referencing the process of saving a file to disc. We thought of liferings, lifeguards, hands, rescue boats, helicopters, and banks. That led us to using the philosophy behind "save" - making something safe - which led to bank vaults/safes, baseball home plates, file cabinets, keys, combo locks, keyholes, doors, houses, bank buildings, cash registers, and security images like fences, walls, barbed wire, and castles. I'm sure there's a lot more out there... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40180 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
