Care Symbols vs Pictogram System
洗濯表示 / 案内用ピクトグラム
Care Symbols comes from Symbol Systems and Pictogram System from Information Design. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Care Symbols
Four figures, the tub, the triangle, the square and the circle, carry garment care across any border. Washing, bleaching, drying and ironing all compress onto a tag a few millimeters wide, information design worked at the smallest possible area.
Pictogram System
Unified symbol systems that name facilities and actions without language. Tokyo 1964 systematized sport and wayfinding symbols; the AIGA/DOT transportation set became the public-domain world standard.
| Care Symbols | Pictogram System | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1958– | 1964– |
| Family | Symbol Systems | Information Design |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Tub, triangle, square and circle / The prohibition X and temperature dots / Compression into millimeters / International standardization | Geometrized human figures / Uniform stroke weight / Consistency as a system / Independence from language |
| Best used for | Designing handling instructions that must cross every language · Printing instructions for several processes into a few millimeters | Guiding visitors of many languages through a venue without words · Turning facility or sport categories into marks legible from a distance |
| Type | Keep the four base outlines, line weight equal across all of them | Draw every mark on one grid and stroke weight, human proportions shared |
| Composition | Wash, bleach, dry and iron in that order, evenly spaced in one row | Fit all symbols to a square frame with matched margins and optical center |
| Material | Woven or transfer labels whose outlines survive repeated washing | Single color silhouettes, minimum size and viewing distance decided first |
| Caution | Thinning the lines to fit a smaller tag lets dots and crosses clog after washing, and a prohibition gets read as permission. | Drawing each mark as a picture lets stroke and proportion drift, the set stops reading as a system, and meanings swap at a distance. |