Seeking a symbol with meaning

Lent 2020 - Day 21

Religions have their symbols. A cross, a star and crescent, a hexagram, the yin-yang circle, the wheel of Dharma. Clear communication of one's beliefs, a battle flag, a sign denoting holy places.

Building your own religion? What would your symbol be? It would need to be symbolic... Many years ago - I can't remember whether it was our religion teacher, Fr. Gilligan, or ks. Andrzej, the charismatic priest briefly attached to the Polish parish in Ealing to preach to the youth - who explained the Star of David. He said that the two triangles represented God and Man. God is represented by the triangle pointing down; "reaching down to man", Man by the triangle pointing up, "reaching up to God". As a teenager, that appealed to me. However, the symbol does not date back to Biblical times. Sometimes symbolism is read into symbols that the designer never consciously intended...

What would I want to symbolise in my personal belief system? Well, a few things. The infinitely long journey from Zero to One, the ultimate fulfilment of the Universe, universal awareness and Good. The notion of a Life in Balance, the notion of Perspective.

This is a first attempt to create such a symbol; it is the infinity sign balanced on a Golden Triangle, one where the ratio of the base to the sides is 1: 1.618, the Golden Ratio.

A windmill? How sustainable!

I'm not happy with how it looks, visually - it conjures up a pair of eyes and long nose - a baboon, or a fly and its proboscis. Conceptually, it's simple to draw and carries much meaning. Mankind reaching up to infinity, balanced at a focal point; the perspective of looking up to the heavens. 

UPDATE FROM 2021: Conceptually, I have settled on an upward spiral, coming back to where you were a while back, but at a higher level, rising upward and outward to Infinity.

What do you think, dear reader?

This time last year:
New views

This time two years ago:
Humanity in a Creative Universe: a summary

This time seven years ago:
Always let your conscience be your guide

This time eight years ago:
Lenten recipe with prawns 

This time 11 years ago:
Polish economy - recession thwarted

Zloty symbol - your suggestions...

My post from last Friday, in which I suggested that Poland's currency, the złoty, should have its own symbol rather as the pound, the dollar, the euro or the yen have, has attracted a number of ideas from readers and Twitter followers (and family members). The best contributions are displayed below:

Left: Tomasz Majewski (@tomaszmajewski) from Minneapolis suggests a pair of wavy lines intersecting the diagonal of the 'Z'. So far, Tomasz is the only person to skillfully use vectors to provide a decently curve on the wavy lines.

Left: in answer that an overly geometric design smacks of fascism, the novelist B.E. Andre (@B_E_Andre) has suggested wavy top and bottom horizontal lines of the letter 'Z'. Then two parallel bars can intersect the diagonal line of the 'Z', being shorter than the wavy lines. Alludes to a hand-written upper-case Z.

Left: here's my father's idea - use the diagonal of the 'Z' and use it as the line turning the 'l' into an 'ł'. The relative sizes of the 'Z' and the 'ł' indicate the first and second letter of the word 'Złoty'. Key thing is the right proportion between them.

Left: Ross Humphrey's idea is to take the regular alphabetic designator 'zł', and merge the two letters into one symbol using a wavy line linking the 'z' and 'ł'. Typeface - Calibri. This didn't work on my version of Photoshop - this font came out small (despite a 72pt setting).

Left: tongue-in-cheek concept from my brother Marek; a 'Z' and an 'ł' within an 'O'. Spelling 'zło', a reference to Radix malorum est cupiditas -  "love of money is the root of all evil" (Timothy 1 6:10).

The design somehow suggests to me motifs from the Coen Brothers' film, The Hudsucker Proxy.

Any more suggestions?

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Snowdrifts and trains in winter

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Back to the blackboard

(on the superiority of Polish schools to British ones)

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Greed, fear, fight-and-flight - and the weather

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Where the new expressways will meet

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Early spring in London

In praise of Retro Design

Over the past few days, the world of photography has been gripped by an advertising campaign by camera manufacturer Nikon, which seems about to launch a new camera that has all the aesthetic attributes of an old camera. I wrote about this phenomenon earlier this year (and indeed last year too) in the context of the Fujifilm X100 rangefinder camera - which I liked, but did not buy.



The retro look Nikon is said to have a full-frame sensor and yet be smaller and lighter than the bulky FX-format DSLRs (the D4, D800 and D610) that Nikon currently makes - but most importantly, the new camera (Nikon DF) will have the aesthetic appeal of that timeless classic, the FM. O glory! If this is the case, I shall have to fight extremely hard to resist the temptation to buy the thing.

I have an FM2n, bought new around 25 years ago. It formed the backbone of one of my two 35mm systems - Nikon for single lens reflex (camera has pentaprism and mirror, you see exactly what you snap, good for telephoto work) and Leica (rangefinder - camera is smaller, less intrusive, good for wide-angle work). Now gathering dust on my bookcase, the FM2n is a mighty pretty camera. It shares space with other mighty pretty film cameras - a Leica M2, M3 and M6, a 1938 Contax II, an Exakta Varex VX, a Zeiss Ikonta 6x9 bellows camera.

None of these are being used, as I've abandoned film for digital; yet the cameras themselves are objects of beauty, far lovelier to look at and to have in the hand than a modern polycarbonate digital marvel.

How good it would be to fuse the aesthetics and ergonomics (knobs, buttons and levers as opposed to scroll-down menus) of the classic camera with the functionality of today's technology.

That's what Fuji did bringing out the Fuji X100 (since improved as the Fujifilm X100S). But it had a few important drawbacks that stopped me short of buying one. A) it was a Fuji, not a Nikon; it didn't feel sufficiently robust in the hand. B) it did not have interchangeable lenses. C) Even if it did (like its more expensive sibling, the Fujifilm X-Pro1), the camera's sensor was not full-frame, hence no improvement on the DX-format I currently use.

But now, here's a camera that looks like it will answer these points. If it has the build-quality of the Nikon FM/FE series of cameras, in production for almost 30 years, if it can take all my old manual-focus Nikon AI-series lenses, if it is full-frame (i.e. a 35mm lens is wide-angle not standard, a 50mm lens is standard not portrait)... I shall have to think very carefully about buying one.

The online forums are buzzing with excitement about the imminent arrival of this camera. The jury is split between those that find retro desirable (people of my age, who remember it vividly first time round and today's hipsters, who find the aesthetic of the mid-20th Century an improvement over what we have today) and those hard, soulless cases that demand convenience at the cost of beauty.

I'll let you be the judge. Here are some Nikons down the ages... Which ones do you find the most attractive aesthetically? (all pics courtesy of Nikon)

1954: Nikon S2 - based on the Zeiss Contax II rangefinder.

1959: Nikon F single lens reflex camera, shared base with S-series rangefinders

1971: Nikon F2 replaces the F; more rounded body.

1977-2006. Nikon FM/FE/FM2/FE2/FM2N/FM3A series, lighter, smaller than F2

1985. F-401S - the nadir of Nikon's camera design. Autofocus, motordrive. Cheap-looking, plasticy and ugly.

1999: Nikon D1 - professional digital SLR. 2.7 megapixels. An aesthetic advance on the '80s.

I'm sure most people will find the earlier camera visually nicer to look at than all that's happened since the mid-1980s. While I'm not into the concept of camera as jewellry, the way a camera looks has an impact on the way subjects react when it is raised and pointed in their direction. Professional SLR cameras send the wrong signals. That's why the rangefinder camera, always the more discreet, is better for street photography. An old retro-style camera looks like the toy of an amateur rather than that tool of the professional; people react more positively.

We shall see next week, when Nikon announces its new camera. I hope it's a full frame digital SLR in a body that looks and feels (and weighs as much) as my FM2. If it is, I'll be hard pressed not to buy one. Especially since the latest tease ad shows the new camera in a familiar setting - a photo exploration of Edinburgh. Been there - done that - three times already and want more.


There is a note of caution building up in me. At the end of the ad, we get a teasing shot of how the camera will look - and I can't see any knobs or dials on the top plate. That would be a disaster. Scroll-down menu driven operation I have in my phone thank you. Retro design requires knobs and dials - good ergonomics requires knobs and dials. We wait and see - all will be revealed on 5 November.

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First snowfall in Warsaw

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Małopolska from the train

This time five years ago:
Grading ul. Poloneza

Art, design and modernity

When did the world start looking and sounding more or less as it does today?

Click on the embedded YouTube link to hear the Miles Davis nonet playing Rocker, a Gerry Mulligan composition. Recorded in March 1950. Fresh, isn't it?



Go back three years - and have a listen to Charlie Parker's Crazeology (click on YouTube link below). Such a complex and yet catchy melody



Now look at the aircraft below: Have a guess when it first took to the air? It's a shape not unfamiliar in today's skies...

This is the Boeing B-47, which first flew on 17 December 1947 - 64 years ago yesterday! Its design foreshadowed the B-52, which first flew in April 1952 - and is scheduled to remain in service with the USAF until 2045 - a staggering 93 years after its first flight!

The Big Leap Forward was the swept wing planform and the multiple jets slung under the wings in pods. Big fat turbofans have replaced the slender, polluting turbojets, but otherwise, the configuration of modern passenger jets is little changed.

Now, on to automotive. The last major innovation in terms of the car was the Kamm tail, applying downward force on the rear wheels at speed. Before that - it was the fared-in mudguards. These had been separate until the second world war - then smoothed into an integral unit with the bodywork. If I'm not mistaken - the first mass-produced car with smooth sides... was the Soviet GAZ M-20 Pobieda - which entered production in 1946, at the same time as American cars were still sporting vestigial mudguards. It was two years later that the USA would catch up with the USSR in car design! Technically, it was not the world's most advanced car in 1946, but its design would show the way forward.

Above: a 1952 Hudson Wasp. Today's Opel/Vauxhall Insignia (Buick Regal across the water) is but slightly sleeker at the front and has that aerodynamic back - but essentially, we have the same design concept. Launched in 2008 it has many improvements over the Hudson from 56 years earlier - yet design-wise, the man-on-the-street in 1952 would not be overwhelmed.

Clothes - fashions - certainly for men, wearing something today that would be entirely normal in 1950 - two-piece suit, jeans or chinos, sweatshirt, leather shoes or canvas sneakers - would even look fashionably hipster retro. (Imagine walking about in 1950 wearing clothes from the 1890s!) For women - well, there's a greater tolerance range when it comes to fashion.

Railways - streamlining was present in the zenith of the Age of Steam; by 1964, the Japanese Shinkansen bullet train linked Tokyo and Osaka (515km, 320 miles) in four hours (top speed 210kmh /130mph).

Architecture - moderne has been with us since before WW2. I was recently looking for Scandinavian architecture that has stood the test of time - that has inspired architects to this day. Look at this - Jorma Järvi's design at Pakila primary school in Helsinki from 1954. The stairs, the sunlight, the scale - such a huge leap from the Education Board (architectural style) primary school I attended with its high, thin windows, overbearing brickwork and long, dark corridors.

Yes, information technology has had a profound influence on the way we live and work and entertain ourselves; the change over the past 20 years has been radical. But from the the point of view of the way the world looks and sounds, the last fifty years have brought us little in the way of revolutionary progress. Just small increments, recyclings of what's been, reiterations in a more contemporary key.

The study door is open. The TV's on. There's an ad for Krakus hams and smoked meats. The music - a straight lift from Philip Glass's score for the 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi (see trailer here).

We're not living in a breakthrough era for art, design and music. When will see signs that things are starting to change dramatically once again? Maybe not in the immediate future - when the global economy's in recession, there's less appetite for risk, for design innovation (unless it can be proven to have a direct effect on measurable things like productivity or fuel consumption).

What were the drivers of modernity in the middle of the 20th Century? In one word - war. It was war that got us from the Wright Brothers to the B-52 in less than fifty years. It was reaction to war that stood behind Jackson Pollock.

Wars have been great catalysts for those leapfrogs of human progress - but let's not wish for one now.

This time last year:
Happy ever after

This time two years ago:
Road and rail let me down again

This time three years ago:
Alignment and synchronicity

This time four years ago:
Retro shop, ul. Fabryczna