Laundry symbols make no sense

Here is a potential solution, with all due respect.

Never paid attention to those laundry symbols? You should. Not only do they save clothes, but they are also elegant and beautiful. The design (at least a version of it) is produced by GINETEX, a France-based association in the 70s. Thanks to the superior craftsmanship that goes into each icon, it aesthetically holds up half a century later.

The problem with the current laundry symbols

Despite the fact that we literally carry these symbols with us every day, they fail to educate us on what they stand for and that is the one and only job symbols have. Researcher Joni Browne showed four basic laundry symbols to the respondents, but only 1 out of 15 people got the symbols right. Almost half respondents got every symbol wrong.

Almost half respondents got every symbol wrong (via)

The problem is that these symbols are designed to be memorized or looked up. In reality, people rarely memorize them, nor do they look up the symbols before doing laundry. Furthermore, these are not error codes where you can Google to get a quick corresponding answer. These are abstract icons, sometimes with subtle…