Did you know that I run my own social network? You might have heard me talk about oslo.town before today, either online or in-person. Behind the scenes, oslo.town is powered by Mastodon – a bit of free software.
Every website that runs Mastodon should work pretty well on your mobile phone, but you can also download apps to do the same thing. And some people prefer apps.
There were some decent apps for Android (Tusky) and iPhone (Metatext), but there wasn’t an official app for Mastodon. Until now!
Having worked on a project for some time around gender pronouns, it became evident that there was no universal symbol or icon to represent the concept of a pronoun.
The only icon that came up in online search results was the abbreviation “Pron” with a block of background colour. This is an abbreviation of an an English word.
With an increasing number of apps and services starting to incorporate pronouns in profile options, creating a supporting symbol seemed appropriate. The abbreviation “Pron” is language-specific and wouldn’t work well internationally.
I tasked myself to come up with an abstract symbol that can represent pronouns in a universal way. However, it had be flexible enough to showcase the diversity and full range of pronoun usage.
The Pronoun Icon
The icon is a three-circle Venn diagram, rotated in a manner so that there is one circle on top, and two below. Each circle represents the three most common pronouns; They/Them, She/Her, and He/Him.
The circle representing They/Them has been intentionally placed on the top. It’s a celebration of diversity and avoids a preference or priority to the most common gendered pronouns.
The section of overlapping circles creates a central triangular figure composed of three interlaced arcs. This is also known as a triquetra. I use it to represent the lesser-used pronouns that fall outside of the top three; known as neopronouns.
A personal pronoun icon
The pronoun icon also allows you to customise the symbol styling to visually present your pronouns at a glance.
By reducing and increasing the prominence of various parts of the symbol, it gives a glanceable insight into what a person’s pronouns might be once set:
pronouns.design
I went ahead and created pronouns.design which, over time, will be a set of guidelines and usage for an icon for pronouns.
The aim will be to offer a range of downloadable assets and guidelines to help people get started with implementing pronouns into their digital product, apps and websites, or print material.
I believe any good icon should work in black and white, outline and solid. It should work in flat colours and gradient colours. It should be able to work in almost colour, provided it meets colour contrast requirements, and by visible to the partially sighted.
All this requires some work and some tweaking over time. But for now, I’ve shared a first version one of the icon and the website.
Make the pronoun icon better
I would love to hear your feedback, so please leave your comments in the comments section below this post, @mention me on the fediverse, or email me on coxy@live.no
Whole Damn Body is a collection of remastered 7″ records and standalone tracks created at the time of the album Hello Sadness.
This is the first time these 7 tracks, some of them cult fan favourites, have been available for a decade – and the first time to be available to officially stream and buy digitally.
Shoppers can also buy a ‘Old Zippo Lighter’ enamel badge, limited to a run of 300, which comes with instant download link for the EP.
Recently, I’ve been into a few punk bands; Cassels, Fontaines D.C., Idles, Jeff Rosenstock, PAWS and have been playing a lot of So Cow.
As far as I’m aware, So Cow is pretty much a project from front-man Brian Kelly, joined with friends and foe alike on guitars, drums, and other instruments. And it sounds great.
I discovered So Cow on Bandcamp a few years back and bought the album The Long Con on vinyl – which I immediately caught my eye because of the crudely drawn horse on the front of the artwork that did a sick. Or looks happy at discovering some sick. Funny stuff.
I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to classify them as punk? I guess they are pretty punky. Or post-punky. I don’t understand music genres anymore.
You should give them a listen. The album The Long Con is my favourite so far and you can stream and buy it on Bandcamp. There are a few physical vinyl copies left. It’s on Apple Music and Spotify too, no doubt.
