Symbol of the Year and Other Notable Symbols - Annual Vote

Each year since 2012, alumni/ae, students, and faculty of Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program have voted for a Symbol of the Year and other Notable Symbols. The Symbolic Systems Program focuses on human and computational systems that use symbols to communicate and to represent information. As affiliates of the Symbolic Systems Program, we select a Symbol of the Year and other Notable Symbols and announce them at the end of each year, in recognition of the important role that symbols play in our world.

The Symbol of the Year and other Notable Symbols are not necessarily new symbols in the year when they are recognized (although they can be). Rather, these designations are for symbols that have achieved widespread cultural importance during the year of voting. The idea of an annual vote for Notable Symbols was inspired by the American Dialect Society's annual Word of the Year vote. It was anticipated by the writer Lindy West, when she playfully designated the hashtag character ("#") as the "Symbol of the Year" at the end of 2010.

A symbol is both used and understood to represent a concept, object, location, event, quantity, or linguistic unit. Types of symbols include the following:

• a flag or emblem (e.g. the Olympic flag, the AIDS awareness ribbon, a police badge, a union label)
• a costume, garment, or bodily adornment (e.g. a graduation gown, a cowboy hat, the Guy Fawkes mask)
• a grapheme, written character, or glyph (e.g. the '+' sign, the lowercase 'e', the Helvetica 'A')
• a hand signal or gesture (e.g. the 'A-Okay' sign, a military salute)
• an iconic object or animal (e.g. the Statue of Liberty, the black cat)
• a symbolic place (e.g. the agora, the Kremlin)
• an ideogram (e.g. the peace symbol, the caduceus symbol of commerce)
• a logo (e.g. the Red Cross logo, the Apple Inc. logo)
• a shape (e.g. the crescent, the upside-down triangle)
• a pictogram (e.g. the International Symbol of Access, the Universal Recycling Symbol)
• a screen icon (e.g. the magnifying glass/search icon, the trash icon)
• an auditory symbol or acoustic signal (e.g. the train whistle, the Intel bongs, the SOS prosign)
• a tactile symbol (e.g. a braille character, a TSBVI Standard Tactile Symbol)
• a symbolic action or event (e.g. the lighting of a candle, the sun setting)
• an iconic photograph or image (e.g. Migrant Mother, Guerrillero Heroico)
• a symbolic work or performance (e.g. the Star Spangled Banner, Romeo and Juliet)
• a color or pattern (e.g. Navy blue, the Royal Stewart tartan)
• a posted sign or signal (e.g. an exit sign, a red light)
• an abbreviation or acronym (e.g. 'lbs.', 'USA')
• an iconic person or group (e.g. the Pope, the Freedom Riders)
• a name or nickname (e.g. 'Betty Crocker', 'Joe the Plumber')
• a word, phrase, or morpheme (e.g. 'email', 'Win one for the Gipper!')
• a mascot or mythical/imaginary character (e.g. Ronald McDonald, Aphrodite, Yogi Bear)
• a token or marker (e.g. a dollar bill, a playing piece in Monopoly, a dial position on a clock)

The following table summarizes the results of voting in each year for which we have selected a Symbol of the Year and other Notable Symbols (click on each year's link for details).