Week 2 - Exercise 2 - Our Tribe

The exercise this week had us in our "tribes" (groups for our assessment) coming up with a symbol that would identify what we stood for as a group, taking into consideration the different traits and values each individual has.

My Tribe consists of Josh Davey, Ian Joson and myself.

Our task was to first come up with a mind-map of everything we stood for, then we were to create a paragraph, describing in list format, our beliefs and values as a group. From there we were to break down the paragraph into a sentence, from a sentence to a word, and from a word we were to create a single symbol that would be our tribes identifier.

From this exercise, our tribe broke everything down down to be summed up by the word "Curious" - meaning that we like to live curiously and look at the world in detail.

I found this exercise to be both fun and a great learning tool. It teaches to help get ideas to first look big and then refine what you have. This refinement helps me as a designer to come up with simple yet effective ways of creating meaning through symbols.

*Edit - photos of our groups symbol to be posted once received

Week 2 - Symbol Style - Group Identifiers

My task this week was to collect images of identifiers that label a group through the use of a symbol.

Symbols have been used through out history as a simple way for others to identify a particular group of people. For example, a compass and set square has been used as a symbol for the Freemasons for centuries.

I collected up a range of symbols that identifies some well know and some less known groups. Here's what i came up with:


Pentagram - Satanists


Swastika - Nazis


Pitchfork - MS13 (Mexican Gang)



BDSM (Bondage culture)


Peace Symbol - Hippies