A personal and playful exploratory project regarding different languages and common symbols.

I moved around a lot and each time one of the main things I would find peculiar was how different languages perceive and name common or global symbols. I started seeing that the @ symbol which represents a big part of the digital world today was given different names in each country, most of them based on its resemblance to an animal or object disregarding completely its actual function or origin. When the at symbol became popularly used countries that did not consider this symbol before created a name for it, or at least i suppose their public did, allowing for some imaginative creations for this simple yet odd combination of an “a” and an “e”.

I developed an illustrative take on this possibly grassroots’ naming while still keeping the symbol typographically recognizable, bringing those imaginative creations to life and expanding their verbal meaning into their deriving visual one. I then proceeded to include the environment for those real yet imaginative animals through the flags of their respective countries, using different pattern works.