Japanese Food Pictograms

I found these pictograms representing different Japanese foods on www.iconglobe.net The work was created by the designer Masaaki Hiromura for Chinese food chains. I had a go at covering up the text that showed what each one meant and found that some of them I could work out but others I could not. For example I could understand the chicken, lemon, orange and strawberry, but could not work out the eel or seaweed. I am also unsure of whether the other parts of the pictograms, which appear to look like Japanese writing actually are real words. Perhaps they are and so would make more sense to Japanese people.

I like the idea of incorporating pictograms of items of food within the symbols because for such a unique writing style in comparison to the generic alphabet the rest of the world are familiar with, I found that I could understand some examples, which I think it quite a good thing. A language that I would never be able to understand unless I learnt the language seems to have become understandable (in some of the examples) by simply incorporating images, which is quite impressive.

I think the similar style of the pictograms shows consistency, giving you the sense that they are apart of a series. I also think that the example of them on display, where they appear on a white background and are green in colour actually stands out really well. Also the idea of green brings about connotations of cleanliness, which is probably quite a good thing for food but also the idea of healthiness – that the food is healthy and good for you.