A world without pictograms…

In the excellent Pictograms exhibition at Japan House, a world without pictograms is explored in order to drive home the power of these universally informative stripped-back symbols. As they say in the exhibition, “Without pictograms, our surroundings would be crowded with text, harder to navigate, and even simple tasks would demand extra attention to absorb details that cannot be grasped at a glance.” Simple tasks like handling a package in the right way:

Those three symbols on the left work way better than all the words on the right, right?

Words are wonderful, but when you need to get key information across to everyone super quickly and easily, pick pictograms.