Telephone symbol

I was thinking about other kinds of analogue telephones and thought of phone boxes and how they are quite iconic in London to represent England.

Also they are not really used as much any more since the development of mobile phones but they remain pretty valuable to international visitors as a cheapish way to phone around which made me think about the symbol for a phone.

Above is a quite well known symbol for a pay phone.

When you look at the symbol you know exactly what it means immediately.

But if you actually examine it, it is really barely even recognisable as what it actually physically represents which is a phone receiver. It is strange how such simple shapes can be universally understood even when they hardly look like their signified subject. 

I started thinking how different the phone symbol can look with a few changes.

So if you turn it this way up.

And then edit the colours a bit...

It looks like a rainbow with two pots of gold at the ends!

This could be a conspiracy or I could just be a genius. 

So similarly if you do this...

It starts to look like a symbol for a magnet instead of a phone. 

So they weren't brilliant examples but you get the idea.

It's interesting how a simple symbol that could realistically look like several other things can specifically represent just one.