[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. There's an exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt that's closing this Sunday, so consider this your last call, folks. It's called Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols. When we talk about signs, we're talking about visual representations of an idea from the stop sign to the laughing emoji.

Graphics like these depend on a shared understanding and a common visual language that permeates culture. The exhibit explores how that visual language has continued to inform and connect people throughout history. It's based on the work of famed industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. In 1972, Dreyfuss helped publish the Symbol Sourcebook, a 300-page tome, the Bible of designed symbols.

It was one of the first efforts to compile the thousands of symbols we use in our daily lives. Hazard symbols, laundry tag instructions, and religious iconography. It's been more than five decades since the publication of that book. Since then, symbols have been altered to be more inclusive and whole. Emojis have become part of our daily communication. There's a whole new wave of symbol activists working to expand the lexicon like adding skin tones and hair textures. You can learn about all of it in the exhibition.

Again, it's titled Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols, showing now through August 11th at the Cooper Hewitt. You have about a week to see it. When it first opened, associate curator at the Cooper Hewitt, Emily Orr, joined me to talk about it. I started by asking her to define some of the terms for the discussion by explaining the difference between a symbol and a picture. Here's what she said.

Emily Orr: A symbol is a compact arrangement of line, shape, color, and form that is more efficient and quickly recognized than written or spoken language. Some symbols require some interpretation and others are immediately recognizable.

Alison Stewart: What's an example of one that might require some interpretation? I think we can say a stop sign's pretty recognizable. I'm curious about one you would think you could describe as needing interpretation.

Emily Orr: A great example is the skull and crossbones. When Henry Dreyfuss came out with the Symbol Sourcebook, he included the story of the skull and crossbones being presented to a classroom full of elementary school students. When the skull and crossbones was presented on a flag, they all shouted pirates. When it was all presented on a medicine bottle, they recognized the symbol for poison. Sometimes with symbols, context is everything.

Alison Stewart: Tell us a little bit more about Henry Dreyfuss. Who was he? How did he get involved in the design? How did he become so important to design?

Emily Orr: Henry Dreyfuss was a pioneering American designer who touched many aspects of American life. For decades, he had been using symbols on the products and services that he designed. His major clients included Bell Labs, Polaroid camera, the New York Central Railroad. He believed in the power of symbols to give quick and easy instruction for the user. For Dreyfuss, the user was always at the center of his design practice. His aim was to make his designs efficient, easy, and wonderful to use, a pleasure to use for anyone using them.

Alison Stewart: What was the origin of the Symbol Sourcebook?

Emily Orr: The Symbol Sourcebook was the culmination of decades of research of him using these symbols in his design projects. He hoped that it would create a standardized system for people to use around the world, whether they were symbol users, symbol designers. He believed in the power of symbols to break language barriers and wanted to share this symbol system in the hopes of facilitating better worldwide communication.

Alison Stewart: What is it about the subconscious and the unconscious that we need to think about when we start thinking about the importance of symbols and the impact of symbols?

Emily Orr: Well, the same symbol can carry multiple and even conflicting meanings over time. For example, groups opposed in their aims and values have chosen certain symbols to represent solidarity for a pressing cause. At the same time, symbols have energized other conversations around activism, war, race, national identities, and politics for decades. The aim with the Symbol Sourcebook was that symbols could rise above all of this and connect us. At the same time, it is important to recognize that symbols also have the power to divide us. I think being aware of the provocative gesture that symbols can have makes us more aware of their impact and power and, again, recognize the importance of context within the use of symbols is key.

Alison Stewart: I was particularly taken by the activist group, Accessible Icon Project, that you feature in the exhibit that really wanted to redesign the wheelchair-accessible symbol. Tell us a little bit about The Accessible Icon Project and what went into the wheelchair-accessible redesign.

Emily Orr: For sure. The Symbol Sourcebook included the first symbol of access that was designed by a Danish design student in 1968. It depicted a person sitting passively in a wheelchair as though waiting to be pushed to a destination. By 1972, the symbol had gained recognition in at least 25 countries and featured in the Symbol Sourcebook, but Dreyfuss never intended the Symbol Sourcebook to be the final say on symbols.

I think he really would have embraced this story of change and how symbols have continued to develop over time. From 2009 to 2011, The Accessible Icon Project formed a community-based effort to redesign the symbol into an empowering image that shows a person pushing forward on their own. This icon is in the public domain and we have it in Cooper Hewitt's collection. It was collected in collaboration with the designers.

We are proud to be able to show it in the exhibition, not only as a graphic but also as a parking lot stencil that is used at icon events across the country to bring together disabled self-advocates and their allies to paint over and update parking lot symbols. Dreyfuss would love this open-access approach to symbols and, I think, would really enjoy this story of how symbols are changing based on new needs and new users.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's really extraordinary when you look at the difference in just how it can make you feel to see the person who uses a wheelchair leaning forward, being active, as opposed to just the static image. It gets you. I sat there in front of it for a while and thought like, "This is really amazing, just the difference this symbol makes."

Emily Orr: The transition of the design is actually captured in its production. It started out as a street art campaign in the Boston area with stickers being placed on parking signs. Eventually, once the symbol was standardized, we now see it in its full form across the country.

Alison Stewart: There's also a part of the exhibit and this is the language that's used in the exhibit about the hobo code. It's fascinating. It's a series of symbols for people living off the grid that they create for one another. For example, there's a plus sign and then there's a small smiley face, which means, "Doctor here won't charge." There's a rectangle with a line sticking out at a 45-degree angle that says, "Alcohol in this town." What is the origin of the "hobo code"?

Emily Orr: The hobo code is positioned in the Symbol Sourcebook under the folklore heading. The hobo code was a system of chalk marks and charcoal marks left primarily by itinerant workers hopping on and off trains looking for work, used at its height at the turn of the 20th century. These symbols sent quick messages, mostly to keep these workers safe, "Free telephone," "Kind lady lives here," "This way." These symbols kept the community safe in the public sphere. For this reason, since they were done in chalk and charcoal, many don't survive. If you take a close look under bridges or on fence posts in your city or neighborhood, you might well see the remains of some.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Emily Orr, associate curator at the Cooper Hewitt. We're talking about the exhibition, Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols. Let's take a few calls. Laura is calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Laura. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Laura: Hi. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing well.

Laura: I wanted to talk about my students. I'm an elementary art teacher in Brooklyn. I teach them how to paint, but not what to paint. The students coming in, this year especially, are from eastern Russia and Kazakh area. They don't speak English. This girl painted an eagle, a yellow sort of eagle on a light blue background, but the eagle had these red marks all over it like it was cut and wounded. I looked up the flag from that area, from a Kazakh flag, and it was of an eagle but not wounded on a light blue background. She's coming from a war-torn area and not speaking English but creating this image. I thought that was interesting. Then another student, I don't know if I should tell you one more story.

Alison Stewart: Sure. Go for it.

Laura: Another student created a two-headed dragon, black on a red background. I looked at the flag of Albania, and it is a two-headed dragon, black on a red background, but he made one head much bigger than the other. He said, "It's a two-headed dragon, but they are brothers. They fight all the time, but they love each other." I thought his story was very interesting.

Alison Stewart Laura, thank you for calling in. Emily, I want to make sure we address this because we're getting a lot of calls about this. I'll read a text about this. "I'd love for the guest to discuss the politics of skin tone and emojis. In the past, I always used to stick to the 'default yellow.' One, because I never paused to think about it. Two, I was the target demographic of the default, therefore represented, and in a way of not acknowledging the fact that I'm white."

"More recently, I've changed my emojis via text and on Zoom to match my skin tone. I noticed that many of my white peers continue to use a default yellow while my peers, who are people of color, use emojis that more closely match their skin tone. What's the deal?" It's such an interesting point. We've got an older woman calling in from North Carolina who wanted to talk about skin tone and emojis. When did emojis begin to acknowledge that there were people with different skin tones and different hair textures?

Emily Orr: Cooper Hewitt has in its collection two emojis that speak to this story that tell the story of how designers have made it possible for more people to see themselves included on the emoji keyboard. We have, in Cooper Hewitt's collection, the person with headscarf emoji that was designed by Rayouf Alhumedhi when she was only a 15-year-old student.

We also have the inter-skin tone couple emoji that was a collaboration with Tinder so that more people could see themselves and reflect the diversity of relationships on the emoji keyboard. These interchangeable emoji partners made it more possible for people to have their identities represented in the digital conversations and online chats they were having with family and friends.

Alison Stewart: You also feature Jennifer 8. Lee, who is an emoji activist who helped usher culturally inclusive symbols into the lexicon like dumpling emoji. Tell us a little bit more about this kind of activism, and what does it take to have a new emoji introduced?

Emily Orr: The governing board, the Unicode Consortium, approves and standardizes each new emoji, but anyone can submit a design. That's a real aim of the exhibition, to inspire visitors to design their own symbols or emoji in the exhibition itself and amplify the conversations that they want to have and empower people to use symbols to have those conversations that are important to them.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a couple of calls. We have two excellent calls. The first on Line 6 is Hendrika, who I believe is 10 years old. Hi, Hendrika. Thanks for calling.

Hendrika: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Hendrika: I really like the surprised emoji because I like how it's designed and just the way it looks. I like the way it is drawn and I really like the way it's designed.

Alison Stewart: Hendrika, what do you like about using emojis?

Hendrika: What?

Alison Stewart: Why do you like using emojis?

Hendrika: I really like using emojis because I feel like they're ways to express yourself. I think they're very fun because I think it's really cool to be able to not just only write words but also to be able to write pictures, which I know sounds weird.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Doesn't sound weird at all. Well done, Hendrika. Thank you for calling in from Inwood Hills. I was about to ask you, Emily, about a woman who is in the exhibition, Madeleine Moore-Burrell, who worked for Henry Dreyfuss and Associates. There's a documentary about her in the film. Her son happens to have called in, so let's talk to Adam first, then we can bring you into the conversation. Hi, Adam. Thank you for calling in.

Adam: Hi. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Tell us a little bit about your mom.

Adam: Well, my mom has done so many different things, but I think one of the things that is most notable is that she is the first African-American female industrial designer and designed so many amazing things that we use every day. The first plastic hanger, the trimline phone, John Deere's green and yellow colorways. Those were all part of the things that she created as her tenure with Dreyfuss.

One of the things that I remember most about the Symbol Sourcebook is seeing it on our shelves when I was growing up, being an eight-year-old or seven-year-old around 1977 or '78, and just spending hours pouring through this book. It was such a simple thing just like pages and pages of symbols. I think to a child's mind, when you really think about what a symbol is, it is basically the shortest story you can tell.

It is a representation of, "This happens here, this happens next," so on and so forth. It was kind of like just sitting and just looking at story after story after story. I amazingly would not get bored just pouring through all this and seeing the many different ways in which people have thought of how to tell the shortest possible story, one thought you're trying to convey.

Alison Stewart: Adam, I'm so glad you called in. Thank you so much for calling in. Emily, anything that you wanted to add about Madeleine Moore-Burrell? The film is really interesting and she was quite beautiful on top of it all. [chuckles]

Emily Orr: Madeleine relayed the story of working in Dreyfuss' office and how she had conversations with him about the immediate readability of symbols. She felt that Dreyfuss understood her dyslexia and valued her opinion. He looked to her when he was developing a new symbol design or they were collaborating on a new symbol design as a test to see whether it would be more broadly readable to the general public. She played a large role in designing many of the symbols that are now captured today on your cameras, for instance. A major client group that she worked was Polaroid Corporation.

Alison Stewart: We've got a text that says, "In Barcelona, all of their little walking symbols at the crosswalks are different and very inclusive. I know walking my son across the street, I struggled to explain, to wait till the white man says we can walk. We call it the light guy, but I'd love to see inclusive walk lights in New York City." Someone else wrote, "I've become increasingly sensitive to using the OK hand symbol since learning it's been adopted by pro-white supremacy groups." That's a really interesting point of view.

There's something else I thought was so clear. One of the great things about the exhibit is it's right in front of you. You see the subtleties and the changes. A good example is the Olympic symbols and how the changes are different between different cultures and how the changes are different over time. The early symbols seem to be very literal and then they get a little bit more imaginative. What was the thought behind including the Olympic symbols in this exhibition? What point and what questions did it answer?

Emily Orr: The Olympics are an incredible location to explore the impact of symbols to break language barriers. At the Olympics, a specially designed system of symbols guide athletes, coaches, staff, spectators coming from all over the world. They help visitors locate goods and services, navigate a city that they've likely never been to before, and identify sports, of course. Systems of sports symbols were developed to proclaim a national identity.

The recreation section of the Symbol Sourcebook includes the symbols for the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Olympics. Dreyfuss was in touch with many of the designers developing these symbols to figure out how they made the design decisions they did. For instance, in 1964, with the Olympics, there was a very abstract expression put forward for the first Olympics that took place in Japan. That was very important that an abstract system of gestures represent that modernity.

From there, the hope was that these symbols would be what that designer called an international relay of language of symbols that could be picked up and carried on and personalized by the designer representing the national identities of the future Olympic sites. Thinking about Olympics and sports symbols also raises questions about how symbols represent the body and its movements. In the exhibition, we have a really fun interactive where visitors can mimic a sports symbol shined in front of them and move their body to see how designers have captured the human form in motion.

Alison Stewart: There are some great opportunities for interaction with the exhibit. Perhaps one of my favorites at the end is you can try to create your own symbol or your own emoji. What is a symbol you've seen somebody create that you think is just, "Ah, perfect, chef's kiss"?

Emily Orr: The symbols that visitors have designed continue to be an inspiration. They have spoken to close relationships with pets and families and friends. There's been a warning, "Do not use ChatGPT on this assignment." They're responding to current issues of climate action. There were a number of symbols around poor air quality in New York City recently, so it's wonderful how visitors are really reflecting on causes that they care about, messages, warnings that are important to them and their communities.

Alison Stewart: That was Emily Orr, associate curator at Cooper Hewitt. The name of the exhibition is Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols. It's at Cooper Hewitt until August 11th this coming Sunday.

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