Rant Alert: Symbols

[BizzieLizzie]

I know there was a thread about this a while back but I can't find it and I need a rant. I recently started GK Cat in a Window and absolutely love it. It is gorgeous to stitch, the blends work very well and the detail is exquisite. BUT ... why are there so many similar symbols?! And I don't mean like < and >, I mean symbols that are THE SAME(!), just different sizes. For instance there's a small black disc, a medium black disc and a large black disc . There's also a small black square with a white circle in the middle and a large black square with a white circle in the middle . There are two different 'fonts' of a tick/check mark and three or four different styles of star . Seriously. Every time I come across a new symbol I have to check the whole key to make sure there aren't any other similar symbols and I have to make sure that the colour makes sense in the context of that part of the pattern. It is slowing me down enormously and spoiling what is otherwise an absolutely joyous piece to stitch. There are far more symbols in the world than colours and blends in one pattern, so why oh why do some designers use such a small selection of symbols?

Sorry about the rant but it's such a shame for a lovely pattern to be spoiled by something so mundane and I just had to get it off my chest.

I'm tempted to write (politely! ) to GK asking if they could please use more different symbols but I don't know if it would do any good.

[richardandtracy]

If you had charted it yourself using my software, you'd be able to re-assign the symbol numbers to ones you consider sufficiently different, and you'd be able to rant at the programmer to do something about it.
Umm.. Seem to recall that happening recently, too. Sorry.

All joking aside, there is, honestly, no excuse for unclear charts. I suggest you go back & talk to them - you have nothing to lose as they can't remove your chart from you now you have it. If that doesn't work, try ranting at them - at least it'll make you feel better, even though it's less likely to have an effect than asking nicely.

Regards,

Richard.

[Allyn]

Oh I agree! If I have to stop and study the chart to differentiate symbols, it annoys me to no end. I don't even like the mirrored symbols (my brain reads equally well forward and mirrored text, so I see mirrored symbols as duplicates until I study on them a bit), especially if they're in the same color family and the shading in an area is all the same symbol, just mirrored left-to-right or top-to-bottom.

I don't know if it would do any good to write them. If you don't write to voice your concern, you know nothing will happen. If they care about their customers and they want to buy more charts from them, I'd like to think they'll listen.

And thank you, Richard, for taking the time to create those additional symbols. My swap list is almost complete.

[speart]

GADS, yes! Stoney Creek must take great pains (and too much joy!) doing this, too. I'm working on a mourning sampler--aka the Grandmother piece, aka the frickin forever longer than a HAED piece--that makes my bonkos. Capital B/lowercase b, and e, and = or vertical, etc. It's such a fun piece other than that silliness!

[rcperryls]

This is a rant worth another thread. I hate when symbols are so similar that the difference between O and 0 is a big difference. Drives me nuts. The < > and ( ) or (( )), when combined with < >, (), of in different color shades like
<> that is #BF40BF and<> #BF40FF. Don't seem to run into the colored symbols quite as much lately. Maybe someone figured out that different color symbols don't work. I know that there are charts I never purchased because the pattern gave me a headache! So maybe someone will figure out that similar symbols don't work either.

Carole

[Rose]

Oh this is one of my biggest pet peeves in all of stitching. Why with all the symbols do designers let similar ones go in the same pattern. I know that alot of the programs pick the symbols as you add a new color but really it is not that hard to choose a different symbol.

My other rant is backstitching that blends into the grid lines or covers a symbol so you are not sure which color to use for the cross.

The third issue I have is when the cover picture has different colors or a change to the pattern. I have several patterns and the one I am currently working on and the pattern is different then the picture. I guess they made changes after the person that stitched it made some suggestions???? I do not know but there is one area that when compared to the model on the cover is very apparently different and I have had another stitcher look at my work and it matches the pattern, not the model.

[wendywombat]

Rant Away Bizzie Lizzie...if the designers were Stitchers maybe they would see the problem....I guess most of them just aren't! Perhaps you could tell GK! May do some good....perhaps not to you directly but to others and in the future it might.

Sorry to those designers of patterns we have here I've never had a problem with Amanda G's designs to pick out one of our 'Own' designers...that's possibly because she is also a Stitcher.

Now to be really sexist I expect it's the same as getting a Man to design a kitchen and a Woman to design a work shop!

[Mystonique]

Fully understand your rant. That would have me swearing like a sailor.

[BizzieLizzie]

I'm glad I'm not alone but at the same time it irritates me that so many of us are having the same problem. It would be so much easier if there were a universal set of symbols (all completely different!) for the DMC and Anchor thread colours that all designers used. Over time we'd learn the symbols off by heart and not even have to check the key, and we'd know that any unfamiliar symbols must be blends.

[richardandtracy]

That's an idea. But, speaking with a jaundiced engineer's hat on here, everyone knows standards are good, so we always get lots of them. And they are all different.
Take something as simple as a nut and bolt. Metric, coarse thread. There is a UK standard (BS 3692: 1962) which has worked quite well in industry, this is subtly different from the EuroNorm, which is different from the German DIN, which is different from the ISO standard. All told on the BSI website there are 185 standards that define or partly define metric threads in Europe. Then the Far Eastern countries use different nut sizes for some of the threads (14mm across flats for M8 instead of 13mm). Finally we get to areas where metric doesn't go, like the US, so the US standards for metric threads are different again...

And then who owns the copyright to the standard (so do people have to pay to get it?), and will there be anything to enforce adoption? If so, who? And if so, what happens to freedom of expression for programmer's/designers?

All in all, standards just end up with people feeling like this:


Regards,

Richard

[BizzieLizzie]

Something similar occurred to me after I'd submitted the post - who decides the standard?! Maybe the thread manufacturers could decide their own standard symbols and designers could choose to use them or not and stitchers could choose patterns that use them or not, although it might be annoying if you wanted standard symbols but the designer of a pattern you loved had used their own symbols. But then that wouldn't be any different from what we have now anyway. Hmmm ...

[Allyn]

The idea of a 'standard' concerns me. No matter who would come up with it, it would open a can of worms and folks would still have problems.

It is easy enough for designers and chart producers to switch out symbols in the software they use, and it would take very little effort and minimal expense to have a personalized symbol font created to use in their charting program. Make that personalized font the default, and they know they have unique easy-to-read symbols in every chart they produce. Easy-peasy, so why don't they do it? Maybe because no one has told them they can or maybe their customer base hasn't voiced frustration with the existing symbols so they have no incentive to change the ones they use.

I'm guilty of that myself. I grumble about symbols in the charts I stitch, but I don't tell the designer/chart producer. I'm going to start doing that. "I stitched <chart name and #> and I am very happy with the finished piece, but I had a problem with some of the symbols used in the chart. ......"

[Rose]

Also If as you suggest the thread manufactures make their own standard then when the chart is printed and the option is for Anchor, DMC or Sullivan then what symbols do you use?

Really the thing is for the designer to just take that bit of extra time and go through the symbol list and look to see that they are not duplicated (ie a V or a V < or > )or so similar they can be mistaken for a different number/color. With all the work they put into their designs this would just be maybe and extra 15 to 45 minutes depending on the amount of colors in the pattern and also the easy of the program to change fonts.

I do think that designers need to be made aware o the trouble stitchers have with these things because if no one tells you how will you know??? I do not know if there is a forum that designers go to and talk to each other, get suggestions, ask about news????? That would be a good place to let a large audience of designers know some of the things that are difficult with designs.

Then you get into personal preferences. Some stitchers do not like numbers used, some do not like both upper and lower letters used. Some would like dark colors to use darker symbols other do not some want color symbols some do not and the list goes on and on and on. But again if the designers do not know then they will continue to go with what works for them.

Then the other issue that comes into play are the charts that are digitally made. Lots of these sites do that as well and that calls in a whole different set of issues.

[Fizzbw]

When Skitzzzz does charts for me she always uses numbers and letters, lower and upper case. It's much easier than symbols. My GK chart is a little like yours Lizzie, : is there but also a bigger fatter : !! And as I tend to write the symbols on my bobbins I'm also slowing down double checking....grrrr.

Maybe a petition.....

Nxxx

[Amanda G]

I'd be tempted to contact them and let them know. They may be glad to have the feedback.
This was one issue that I wasn't aware of (from the design side) until it was pointed out on here and I looked into how to change symbols on my design software....it is very easy to do! But if I hadn't read about these issues on here, I wouldn't have known.....well, not until I started to stitch as well.

[Mabel Figworthy]

A very understandable rant

Like Allyn I'm not altogether sure about a "standard" - I'd asvocate a bit of common sense, and designers/chart makers having to stitch the project themselves using the chart they've produced!

There is one more difficulty, and that is that different people find different things clear. I think we're pretty much agreed that the same symbol in different colours or slightly different sizes or bold/standard are all a no-no, but Niki clearly likes "letter" charts that use upper and lower case alphabets, whereas I find those very confusing. I prefer charts where dark colours are represented by a solid, dark symbol and light colours by an open, lighter symbol, so that when I look at the chart from a distance I can almost see the picture in black & white, if that makes sense. So perhaps it would be difficult to make a chart that suits everybody

[mauveme]

That is my pet peeve about charts. It's not as if there aren't enough symbols to use without making them similar or even as you have, the darn same. The last one that made me mad was the Christmas Lilies. She used ! for white and 1 for pale grey and in a see of ! it was difficult after while for the eye to see the difference. So annoying. I finally had to hilight the one symbol so I could stitch it. I was going crosseyed trying to tell the difference

[Allyn]

...She used ! for white and 1 for pale grey and in a see of ! it was difficult after while for the eye to see the difference...

I hear you! The chart I'm doing now uses ! and | for two shades of cream. And r and Г -- not to mention ° and 0. I want to bite someone.