The other day I came across some interesting-looking symbols that will be used to represent various sports at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. They are modelled on Chinese Seal Script characters and were designed jointly by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University. Here are a few of the symbols:
You can find out which sports these represent and see more of them at: http://thierry.todayinchina.com
These are examples of what I like to call ‘modern hieroglyphs’. Such symbols are all around us in the form of signs, logos, icons. Their meaning isn’t always obvious, until it’s been explained to you.
There is not much to say about these except: wow cool! *proudtobechinese* 😉
sometimes you are able to interpret the meaning by giving the general topic. For example if you told me that these symbols are for the olympic games then automatically my brain will search in the category “olympic games” to find suitable sport that would be represented by such hieroglyph or icon, but anyway in general I would say that most of the time if the general topic is not specified then the meaning must be given to you. But anyway I don’t believe it is a general rule, I would there is a chance 50-50% that you would miss or tell correctly the meaning just by looking at the symbol (without knowing the general topic)!