My arrow adventure started in my room as soon as I read the assignment. Looking around I came across some toys sitting out and found that one used for playing card games had tons of arrows on it to show where cards when, what buttons to press and where to take them from ect. I also sew a lot and saw that my sewing machine had a lot of arrows on it to show where to place the thread so you wouldn’t need to pull out instructions all the time and made it very easy to understand the direction the thread needed to move in. They were more complicated than the triangle arrows I saw on the previous object, but were still pretty simple in design. They were not decorative or had any unnecessary ornaments to get the point across easily.
When I went for a walk around the neighborhood I was staying at for the week I came across an interesting yankee’s window cling that had and implied arrow pointing to the right. It may not be what they intended but the arrows reminded me of the stitching on a baseball, but pointed to the right, to imply to the east, where NY is. Then I found the US postal service and the abstract eagle pointing to the right, probably to imply moving forward and sending things off, as well as being an iconic American symbol.
Next I found an arrow on a fire hydrant. It was going through the words and pointing to the right. I can only guess that this was a direction in which way to screw the hose onto the hydrant when the fire department has to use it. Near it I found some arrows spray-painted on the cement from an old construction project in the area to indicate what pipes were where and which kind they were based on the color. I found them to be an amazing example of visual communication because even though they had no words on them, someone who worked for the city could walk right up to them and tell what was where, where it was going and so forth. Near that there was a parked car, with an Arizona parks decal on he bumper. I found it interesting because it was an arrow but still sort of shield shaped, which institutions usually use to try and make themselves seem more distinct, eluding to the old shields of heraldry. Then upon walking by a wall I found a small little drain cover. I don’t think it was meant to be an arrow, but it was what I saw it as first, two arrows pointing to the center of a square, as if they were fusing into each other.
After that I hopped in my car and drove into town to run errands. There were a lot of government/ state signs with arrows on the road, not only indicating where to turn but where certain government facilities were. I found that in the walmart parking lot there was an interesting set of arrows on the cart return because they were not exactly arrows. They instead used ‘>’ all lined up to indicate where the carts needed to go. When I got back in my car I found an arrow on my dash, it was a simple triangle but because of the way it pointed I knew it had something to do with the dials. I found that as I drove through town there were even some street signs that did this when there were only right and left turn lanes. As I looked more and more at various arrows on street signs I started to see subtle difference between them. Some of the arrows had slimmer stems, while some had slightly smaller arrowheads. There was also many times when the stems were different from other signs. They were short and stubby, long and curved, and even balanced out with the arrowhead. The last arrow I came across was in the ‘Ace’ hardware store logo, and to me it honestly looked very grounded, and represented the only way to go was up.
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