We reached the point (some time ago) where the save icon being a floppy disk makes absolutely no sense to anyone born after a certain time. We could choose a more modern media format and use an icon of that instead, but we would run into the same problem once that media becomes obsolete.
What is a good icon for the function of saving something that can easily be understood by anyone regardless of language or the march of time?
Edit: I know it’s not really an answerable question and is hard but the question is what would you come up with if tasks to design an icon. Given the constraints of the question, what are your best shots at coming up with something that fills the requirements and why do you thing it would work?
A hammer and chisel with a stone slate… some combination of that
Just keep using the disk icon.
Just because the original reference is outdated doesn’t mean it’s useless; the symbolism carries over. Changing it to the sake of future-proofing makes no sense because everybody already understands it now, and that knowledge will carry forward into the future. It has become the standard, even if it makes no sense, it even if it never made sense.
Horsepower is still used to refer to engine strength, even though nobody uses horses. Qwerty is still the keyboard default even though it’s not optional, because typewriters had settled on that standard ages ago. The human skull symbol is commonly used as a shorthand to indicate a substance is poisonous, because it has been for a long time. Even the term “dial” when referring to phone calls is still commonly used, even though nobody but your great-grandmother still even owns a rotary phone.
Tldr; If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I would merge the idea of saving and bookmarking, because basically they mean “I want to be able to retrieve this”
☆ (unsaved)
★ (saved)
As a symbol, since the humanity is traveling, the stars are used to find what they are looking for or find it back (typically the North Star). And I’m pretty sure it will stay meaningful for a galactic civilisation.
I like this. Many apps are moving away from save altogether and just automatically save for you, even my local, no-cloud apps auto save when any change is detected. A bookmark for easy retrieval makes sense.
Assuming people still know what a folder is, the most obvious would be a folder with an arrow going into it, like:
or
I like it! No need to know the language or anything. Things collect in basins like rain in bowl-shaped rocks so even without our current level of technology it would still have some indication of saving/gathering.
Thanks. Maybe a bit cryptic. Maybe add a couple dots to indicate stuff is being added and removed?
And is there any way to underline the fact that it’s MY bowl that’s being taken from and added to? Is it necessary? I dunno. Mulling required.
Probably something like this. Seems self-explanatory to me at least.
I assumed it’s sinister for left turn but then I got confused why L was turning right (is L supposed to be for leave?)
Save and Load (?)
If the share icon is a box with an up arrow, maybe a box with a down arrow could mean save?
There is no correct icon, the floppy disk is at least popular enough to be used essentially forever
Alternatives would be making an SVG that mocks a HDD, or an open drawer with an arrow pointing in
For long term (1000 years) I think an open drawer is best especially with an arrow. It suggests putting something in, loading can be the inverse
So people used to store stuff in physical space like drawers? You mean if they needed something they had to physically go there and get it out of something else? Man, early humans were crazy.
Untill we move to SSD.
Seems pretty easy…
You need an icon of a paper with text on it, an arrow pointing from the paper down to a larger box.
A recycle bin?
Not if there is a separate icon where the arrow points up away from the box for “Open”
A vault.
I’m not sure if anybody said it yet, but I think a simple figure embracing something would be pretty universal for a “save” and then delete would be that figure rejecting something by putting his hands up and turning its head.
That is too abstract.
A piggy bank
Floppy disk. Fight me.
Agreed. It’s the tried and true icon.
It’s like on discord, what’s the symbol to make a call? An old school telephone handset. People know what it means. It’s a universal symbol
People have stopped recognizing it as a disk (which is good because that meaning was always pretty confusing in terms of saving vs loading) it is now the save symbol and will continue to be the save symbol centuries after the last floppy disk has crumbled into ash.
Similarly, the folder icon has now been enshrined as load.
Why is the disk save and the folder load? It’s completely fucking arbitrary, both worked just as well for each context. But someone somewhere (probably in the MSFT internationalization and standards team tbh) made that choice once and thus it is that forever.
Yeah there is no reason at this point to change it as we just teach people that the floppy disk means save. I was wondering if we could come up with something that the user, at a glance, would generally identify as saving. What would that glyph look like. In other words, the arbitrary and established icon is what it is but with hindsight and thinking ahead what would be a better icon we could design. One that would convey “save” to the most people the first time they see it.
I think the flopy disk symbol will stay the universal safe button. Maybe nobody will know the floppy disk anymore, just everybody knowing its the safe button
The act of loading necessitates a selection, so the folder makes more sense.
No more so than saving. Either saving and loading use free filesystem browsing interfaces, slots that are embedded into a single file/non-descreet location on disk, or they save into a limited scope of files/folders on disk. The last system seems to be the most common in modern UX within non-compatible apps with the first system being preferred for apps dealing with common files (like a text editor).
Also, there is a whole thing with Save As vs. Save - though with a new file/profile/whatever Save can often trigger a Save As action.
Most saving is done on files that already exist.
That’s a fair answer. There is nothing saying the floppy disk can’t work. By sticking with a symbol that has no actual bearing on function (from the perspective of the future people) you’ve abstracted the concept of saving away from natural language. However, you still place a computational burden on those future people/aliens/whatever where they need to be taught what that icon means.
An AI with a billion samples to draw from might deliver the collective unconsciousness visual you’re looking for.
We’ll see the problem with this is symbols are inherently contextual to culture
