Laughed at a post which defined a synonym as the word you use when you can’t spell the word you want, which led me down bit of an ‘-onym’ rabbit hole and bumping into contronyms - a word (as I’m sure you know) with two definitions or uses; both of which are contrary - so ‘sanction’; to either approve of or threaten with punitive measures, etc.
Contronyms are great, and having re-discovered the word last week I set to wondering if ‘-onyms’ exist in the visual world, as a design language - beyond the usual ocular puns of the ‘duck or rabbit’ picture, of Victorian illustrations featuring hidden faces in landscapes, etc. - where a thing can mean two opposing things simultaneously. Turns out, it appears not - or not any that I could bring to mind or find.
Sure, there’s tons of ‘things that stand in for other things’ as metaphor - that stuff that advertising does so well.
There’s when a thing takes the form of another thing as a sort of visual simile, so lions for being brave, logo’s that stand in for those values. Orangy chocolate in orange shapes.
And colour. Where a certain blue is either a bag of cheese and onion crisps or another, a box containing a 20-carat diamond-tipped tooth pick. But the blue is neither is one and the opposite simultaneously. Unless Tiffany are planning on launching a line of potato-based snacks. I suppose materiality might have it, as something that’s transparent implies there’s nothing to hide. Or that something best (or worse) about it could be made invisible. But it’s a stretch (or shrink-wrap).
As to people and process in the trade, consultants’ are a candidate - as ones who both take and also give advice (and all the jokes about stealing watches, etc.). And something described as ‘fine’ could be taken by some as exceptional or simply adequate (as in supermarket brandy, perhaps - where one happily takes slugs from the bottle and the other only cooks with?) And finished, as in ‘this project has come to an end’, and ‘I’m so done with all this’.
The only situation I’ve settled on so far, as a possible ‘this means this. And that’ is category copy-cat packaging, where the intention is to actually front-load visual familiarity and association as a means to ‘kind of’ camouflage or mimic. Which I’m sure is never intentional…
So here’s my question - have you come across a visual contronym?
