Towards a Visual Identity for Food

Inspired by efforts to create a common visual language, especially The Noun Project and the work of Gerd Arntz on Isotype, we’ve begun work on food icons. Working in collaboration with the team at Industrial Brand, we have a starter set of icons for some common food sources and types of foods. We are releasing all of these icons with a Creative Commons By Attribution License, so if you are interested in the icons, just let me know in the comments. Over time, we aim to create icons for all of the food source types and food types in our database at Foodtree. For more background on our thinking about open food standards, see our list of food and source types (yaml files), please visit our Github repository. We also have all of the icons available in the reverse, with the icon as a knockout of white negative space in a black square.

First, some common food sources.
This group we think of as “origin” sources:
Farm

Urban Farm

Greenhouse

Fish Boat

Garden (we’re currently using it for both personal garden and community garden, but will likely become just the personal version)

Drinking Fountain

Next a couple of “Middlemen.” These actually fall into a category that is a subtype of Processors, known as Beverage Processors.
Winery

Brewery

This group are “Retailers.” These food sources usually fall into a “where-to-buy” or “where-to-eat” classification.
Restaurant

Food Truck (a subtype of Restaurant)

Coffee Shop (another restaurant subtype)

Grocer

Farmers Market (a subtype of Grocer. Ideally there would be two source types related to farmers markets- this one and another as a subtype of “direct sale,” which includes CSAs and U-picks, would also include farmers’ market– owned by farmers.)

Alcohol Retail (admittedly not a great sounding name, but we use just one icon to cover its subtypes: Wine Shop, Liquor Store and Beer Depot)

Now for a few food types:
Meat

Fish

Shellfish

And finally, association. Associations aren’t a food source type, but they play an important role in the food system. They are what economist Michael Shulman refers to as food-system capacity builders. Groups like non-profit organizations, food policy councils, etc.