How many hazardous pictograms can you guess right?

Today we look at pictograms, symbols that say a lot without any words. Let’s see how many of these communication icons make universal sense.

A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration.

Pictograms are characterized by their simplified style, which omits all details that are unnecessary to the desired communication.

But not every picture tells the right story and some are just Greek to me.

To help out, we have a brief test of matching the pictogram to its definition.

We have a selection of really important hazard signs used by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Also an array of pictograms from the National Park Service used in the maps and parks as well as some from the Department of Transportation.

Historically significant

The earliest pictograms were used in Mesopotamia around 3400 B.C. As civilization advanced, creating cities and more complex economic systems, more complex pictographs were devised and used on labels for manufactured goods.

DOT pictograms

The DOT pictograms in the United States came from a 1974 finding by the United States Department of Transportation, which recognized that a standardized set of roadside pictograms were needed for the United States Interstate Highway System.

The American Institute of Graphic Arts, Roger Cook and Don Shanosky of Cook and Shanosky Associates were all commissioned to develop this standardized system. Researching modern pictograms on a worldwide basis, the team produced 34 distinct pictograms.

By 1979, 16 more symbols were added to the system, which brought the total to 50, where it remains today.

The DOT pictograms are used today at such places as airports, train stations, hotels and other public places for foreign tourists. They are easier to identify than strings of text.

Occupational Safety

Hazard symbols have come a long way from the rudimentary drawings used to designate poison in the early 1800s.

As a result of updated OSHA chemical labeling requirements, 2016 marks the first full year of adoption of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals in the U.S.

See if you can match the hazard symbol to its description.

 

 

 

Source: Department of Transportation, National Park Service, Occupational Safety and Health Administration,

 

Source: Orange County Register