May 13, Monday

Today is the birthday of Daphne du Maurier (more-ee-ay), English author and playwright. We have Daphne to thank for such novels as Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel as well as short stories like “The Birds,” in which birds begin attacking humans kamikaze style.

She wrote primarily in the horror genre, often using psychological and paranormal elements. Her parents were both involved in the theater business, but Daphne was never one to soak up the limelight. She became increasingly reclusive as her fame as a writer grew. She was even said to be withdrawn and cold toward her husband and children, particularly when she was in the middle of a novel. Perhaps that was Daphne putting herself in the shoes of her characters, who tend to become isolated from the people around, increasing the reader’s sense of dread and stranger anxiety in the story-world.

“The Birds” and Rebecca were successful in their own right and each adapted to film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Today is the birthday of Inge Lehmann, Danish seismologist and geophysicist.

It is common knowledge that our planet Earth has a solid core, a second molten layer, and an upper mantle and crust. We know this thanks to Inge Lehmann. In 1936, Inge’s seismology work allowed her to posit mathematical formulas to determine that Earth’s core was solid.

With the outbreak of WWII, further research to prove Lehmann’s Discontinuity theorum was put on hold. It wasn’t until decades later, in 1971, that her theorem was finally proven. A computer was able to make all the calculations necessary to verify that the Earth’s core is indeed a solid. This piece of common knowledge really isn’t all that old!

And today is the birthday of Otto “Otl” (Oh-tul) Aicher (ike-er), graphic designer and typographer.

We have Otl to thank for the iconography and stick figures that are ubiquitous. Otl was asked to do the branding for the 1972 Summer Olympics in his native Germany. At that point he had already had a successful career as a pioneer of corporate branding and design. Otl teamed up with Masaru Katsumie who had been in charge of the design and branding for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Otl didn’t invent the idea of pictograms and iconography, but his simplified style and effort to make each pictogram’s meaning blatantly obvious helped the idea of pictograms gain traction.

You probably see pictograms so often that you don’t notice them much. Driving from one town to another, you might see an orange sign with a stick-figure man with a shovel full of dirt. Or maybe it’s a pictogram of a picnic table or a person in a bed, or a pair of binoculars. Without even telling you the meaning, you probably can conjure up an image and know what these mean. Road work, rest area or picnic area, hotels nearby, and a vista point.

If you’ve ever at an airport, the pictograms and iconography are generally very pronounced. This is in order to communicate with passengers who might be speaking a foreign language. Having done a bit of traveling myself, the pictogram for ‘restroom’ is pretty universal: a man and woman with a vertical line between them. Want to “go back” to your last webpage? I’ll bet you’re not clicking on text that says “back.” I’ll take a guess that it’s an arrow or maybe just a ‘v’ pointing to the left.

You get the point! It’s everywhere.

Take a look around today and see how much iconography you notice. There are probably some sitting right in front of you!