permission pictures

After chasing certain people for weeks with no reply, I photoshopped my own pictures that can be used for displaying next-user permissions of products in an alingual way.

These should be considered creative commons public domain, so feel free to use away!

Edit: They will also be included in my 2.0 version of my new freeware open source vendor kit.

http://sldevelopers.com/photos/sample/category1004.aspx

Copy:

No-Copy:

Modify:

No-Modify:

Transfer:

No-Transfer:

If I could make a suggestion, your visual language is a little confusing. The red slashes are superfluous. The No-Copy, No-Mod, No-Transfer icons include a red arrow and a red result so a red slash of negation makes them No-No-Copy, etc. You can do without the slashes and the icons will be clearer. Also, it would be better to make the Mod and Transfer results blue like the Copy icon.

Summary
Remove the red slashes
Copy, Mod, Transfer icons change to the format: Blue Start, Green Arrow, Blue Result
No-Mod, No-Transfer icons change to the format: Blue Start, Red Arrow, Red Result

I appreciate your input, Julian.


Intentional. It helps to express an idea in multiple ways to get the point across. There are also color-blind people who may not tell the difference between red and green.

It also helps because it alters the layout of the picture itself. Some people recognise color differences before they recognise shape differences, and vice versa. Here, both are accounted for.


Intentional. I thought about this, but it's clear - the mod was orange to further emphasize that something is different, especially considering low-res edits of this picture may make it difficult to distinguish a blue sphere from a blue cube. (As it does with the red cube and red sphere with no-copy and no-mod. This is less of an issue here since they are still distinguishable from the positive versions and of each other's positive versions.)

The person is green because originally I wanted all results green. And then I realized that having a blue box turn into a green box does not show copy. Copy should be represented by a perfect copy, including color. I thought the sphere should be orange instead of green because it better showed a modification. And I kept the person green because blue would look too much like a mod operation.



There's no change required. This is how it is, plus the slash.

The slashes are fine, I think.

The thing is that the arrows mean different things in each example. In the copy one, you have the object going to a new object, so the arrow means "can be duplicated to". In the mod one the arrow means "can be changed to" - it doesn't mean you can copy it as a ball, like the copy one, it means you can change it into a ball. And in the transfer one, the arrow means "can be put into the inventory of"; you can't turn it into an av or copy it as an av, you can transfer it to an av.

This makes it confusing for me. You could have the first two being consistent with each other by having the copy being from one block to two...

[] -> [] []

...sort of thing. Then on the left you have before, and on the right, after. I'm not sure about transfer though, using that system.

I Agree.

The thing about the arrows is the red and green colours give multiple messages that kind of read like a double negative.

I would make the arrows white or grey or some neutral colour making the only difference between the "yes" ad "no" versions the slash which "takes off" the meaning.

I would also make them 2D, not 3D as if they are 3D they are objects on the same level as the cubes. One could conceivably look at it and think the cube is turning into an arrow and then turning into another cube or that there are simply three objects in a row there, especially if one comes across one symbol in isolation from the others and especially if the arrow is a foreign symbol to the user. This is a picky point I know, but it's more logical to me to have all the objects 3D and all the modifiers 2D.

The other thing I would change is the avatar, I am not sure what to change it too, but it kind of reads funny to me that the others are about transforming the objects into other shapes and copies and then you see the avatar. My first thought was that the cube was turning into a person. Maybe an inventory folder over the avatars head to indicate inventory?Not sure it can be done without ditching 3D all together.

Yes, I didn't say it, but the arrows and targets should not change colour. The slash is enough. If something's not actually changing meaning, it shouldn't change colour, and the meaning of the arrows and targets is the same in all cases, they just have a slash on top of them saying "this is NOT allowed".

I don't know what you're all talking about, I see them fine. The new items are red because they don't exist, because you can't copy/create them. And you are not allowed to give the box to a person.
However, the red box in the 'no copy' is kinda hard to see. It looks more like 'no turning the box into a particle effect'

- Jolan