Tag: Controller

Overview

For years people have pondered the meaning of Sony‘s brand-defining controller face buttons. The Cross (or X) and Circle buttons are simple enough to decipher — the Circle represents “go” or “ok” (as is its use in Japan) and the Cross represents “no” or “cancel”. Meanwhile, Western games have managed to reverse the commands over time.

While said shapes are easy to explain, the Square and Triangle buttons are a less straight-forward. Thankfully, Japanese designer Teiyu Goto – who designed the first three generations of consoles – has revealed all in a recent issue of Famitsu. “Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. And so we wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination and gave each symbol a meaning and a color”, he said. “The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one’s head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. Consequently, people thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that’s what I wanted.”

Concept

It’s a fascinating story and we’ve decided to pay tribute with a small concept for a seamless pattern which incorporates the acclaimed logo. As there’s plenty of designs around that leverage already on such set of symbols, we’ve taken a different route and focused on a female-oriented pattern, inspired by Women’s Day PlayStation 4 theme released last year by Sony.

Once decided the direction we would have taken in terms of design, the next step was to test the likability of such pattern in a way that was easily understandable. Therefore, we’ve decided to try it out by implementing it on a tech accessory such as an iPhone case.