Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Pareidolia strikes

I saw this logo on a truck of an Austin party rental company. Immediately I thought, what a weird logo for this kind of business. The dude's beard and the turban would not indicate an ethnic or religious group that's known for partying. :-) And the spike growing out of his eye... just surreal. Has he smoked too many substances? Is that what the company means by "Keep Austin Partying?"

Bird logo that looked like a face to me

Then I realized, it's a bird. That's not a beard, it's a wing. And the "spike" is the bird's beak.

It's no wonder I prefer text-based user interfaces to graphic. I never understood why the icons in a graphical UI are so obscure and hard to recognize. At least to me, perhaps less so to other people. When I was learning image-editing programs, people would sometimes tell me to use the "bucket" (a Fill icon), but instead of a tilted bucket, I would see a hand with a mitten. I also couldn't understand why the old-time Windows Control Panel icon was a cat. Yes, a cat. I realize it's supposed to be a bunch of tools, but all those tools look like long, skinny cat's legs.

With faces, it's even worse. We humans are wired to see faces everywhere. So I won't be laughing at the next person who sees Virgin Mary in a toast.

1 comment:

Capt. Spastic said...

Which is worse though?

See faces where there are none or seeing something as a face that is in fact, something else?

How else, rather, do you explain the fact that not everyone would look at that image and see a face. At first look, I thought it was a stylistic fluer de lis. Only upon second look, before reading your description, did it look like a bird to me.

When was the Windows Control Panel icon a cat? I've been involved with Windows since the beginning and I don't remember a cat.