Friday, August 28, 2015

Save Icon Diskette

This is just one of those things that runs through my head as I use and teach others to use Revit. We've been using this icon for Save in most if not all of our software for a long time.


When was the last time we really used one? Does your computer even allow for its use now?

If that's so 1980-90's then what icon would be better for Save these days? A life preserver? I know one product that uses it now, a product called Workspace from Union Square. It looks a bit like these.


If the icon was a $ would people use it more?

5 comments:

Don said...

I always thought a nice dollar sign icon would be appropriate

Unknown said...

To me the life preserver elicits "emergency" or "rescue", so while the literal meaning of "Save" is related, this seems too drastic. I'm fine with leaving the floppy disc... after all, we still "dial" a phone number, and how long has it been since you've seen a rotary phone? When's the last time you actually "hung up" the phone?

architectjon said...

I have been saying the same thing about the old floppy for a long time. Even some early 20 somethings today have not used one. Perhaps an icon of a hard drive would be more appropriate? Like this? https://cdn3.iconfinder.com/data/icons/computer-network-icons/512/Hard_Disk-512.png

Though that could become obsolete soon with SSD's being more widely used.

Galen S. Hoeflinger said...

Funny but true. This same argument would apply to the "Teapot" and rendering tool. Old long lost logic still applies

Anonymous said...

I heard two related great stories from the christmas market at the school of architecture here in Aarhus, Denmark. Not surprisingly there are children there, and also not surprising the architecture students do their utmost to be original/unique which these days sometimes means 'retro' (which must be the least unique thing around). There was one guy at the market putting custom messages onto cards, one child thought his machine for doing this was just soooo cool! It could print the letters one at a time as soon as he pressed the buttons. Of course it was a typewriter!

Another child caught sight of an odd little plastic thing and exclaimed "Cool, look mum, he's 3D printed the save icon!" It was, of course, a floppy disc!