Info on Info

November 1, 2011 3:48 PM

What are the origins of the info symbol? I'm talking about this guy and all variants. I noticed recently that the new info signs around Vancouver bear the same mark as the dashboard widgets on a Mac, and became curious about the origins and spread of it. I couldn't figure out how to google it.
posted by neuromodulator to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

In terms of looking it up:

Wikipedia: I (disambiguation)

which leads to what I think you're after:

Internet-Related Prefixes
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:53 PM on November 1, 2011

Response by poster: I don't think that's it. What you seem to be suggesting is that it's related to the "i" prefix? I'm neither talking about a prefix nor something internet-related. Like I said, it's now on maps around Vancouver to identify the map as a source of information. If you're suggesting it migrated from one to the other, are you basing that on anything other than what's on those pages? I don't see anything in those links about it.
posted by neuromodulator at 4:00 PM on November 1, 2011

Try "information pictogram." These were around a long time before the Internet.
posted by carter at 4:18 PM on November 1, 2011

I remember seeing the "i" in a circle for "information" back when I was a kid at the mall (this would have been in the 80s). So yes, definitely predates the internet, though I can't tell you specifically where it comes from.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:20 PM on November 1, 2011

The Ur-system of this stuff from a design point of view is Otto Neurath's Isotype system - but I can't figure out at the moment if he had a specific i symbol or not.
posted by carter at 4:25 PM on November 1, 2011

Best answer: Well, the AIGA system uses a question mark in a circle. But the ISO suggests a lower-case i [pdf].
posted by dhartung at 4:48 PM on November 1, 2011

Response by poster: Civil_Disobedient, was it a similar "i"? Like, lower case, italic, same font?
posted by neuromodulator at 5:00 PM on November 1, 2011

A white "i" in a blue circle was the standard "Information" dialog icon in Windows 3.1; that takes you back to 1992. I can't find evidence of it in any earlier versions from a quick Google image search.
posted by bbuda at 5:24 PM on November 1, 2011

Best answer: It was an international symbol for tourist information which had been adopted by most European countries by 1975. By then it became officially adopted by the International Union
of Official Tourism Organizations. The computer symbol is an obvious appropriation of the tourist information sign.
posted by JJ86 at 7:22 PM on November 1, 2011 [1 favorite]