Why do so many graphic designers suck at making gears?

Question

^{Disclaimer: Post contains rantish tone, possibly even sarcasm! Lazy designers or those with feelings that bruise easily may take offense. 🤣}

I see it all over the place. Like 9 out of 10 gear icons (where there is more than one gear) the teeth of the gears don't touch properly!

We all know how gears work, right? So what's the deal with so many people making non-functional gears in their icons?

The most common problem is gears that don't touch. Obviously if the gears aren't touching, they won't be serving their purpose. A symbol of non-functional technology doesn't exactly boost confidence in the brand.

^{↑ "I hope we can meet someday."}

Another problem I have seen repeatedly is gears with locked mobility. If you've got a triangular formation of gears, and each one touches its neighbor, movement is impossible. Is this a hard concept? I don't think it is. Somebody please buy a LEGO Technic set for these designers who were deprived in their youth and never learned the basics of how gears work.

^{↑ This configuration is going precisely nowhere.}

A third category of problematic gear configuration includes those with teeth sizes and/or shapes that could never feasibly interlock.

^{↑ The teeth don't interlock. Not happening, man. How did you think this was a good idea?}

What could be the possible reasons for these issues arising over and over in designs? Let's explore some theories:

Possible reasons

• Laziness
• Assuming the audience is too dumb to notice
• Normalization of the practice (being influenced by the bad gear designs of others)
• Some are so focused on how the design "reads" at small sizes that they include low detail teeth... sometimes too low detail to appear functional (some validity here)
• Fear of making it look like they tried too hard ("functional gears are for nerds, man!")
• Mixing up gears with sprockets (as joojaa pointed out). Check it.
• Nobody cares enough. This would be sad, but let's not rule it out.

Look, nobody is saying you need to study gear ratios or anything that involves math (scary!). Just make the smaller gear have fewer teeth than the larger gear, but move it close enough that the teeth of both gears mesh. Trace the motion path in your mind's eye, and check that they can actually move.

What's worse is when the icon is animated. The designer would have had to witness the non-functional motion of the interactionless gears, and publish it anyway.

Is there some deeper cause or something else going on that I've missed? Please, enlighten me - how did we get here, and how can we fix it? (And am I just crazy, or have y'all noticed this too?)

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_{Update: Thank you, everyone who contributed these thought-provoking and humorous answers. I learned about sprockets, gained perspective on how much junk design is produced by those who aren't designers, and reframed my ideas somewhat with regard to what ratio of form versus function is the "Goldilocks zone".}

Answer 1

Firstly, not everyone who creates a page/layout is necessarily a graphic designer. Many people who create such documents will just use some clip art. Basically it's copy and paste, scale and re-use. IMHO none of the examples you have shown are particularly good examples of graphic design. So, why do people use them? Because they can, and they're cheap, often free. You may call them lazy, but it might in fact just be down to pragmatism. There may also be budget constraints. Somebody has to do work to create custom graphics, and somebody has to pay for that work.

As far as graphic designers are concerned, things such as functional/realistic gears don't necessarily work so well in graphic design. There's a degree of stylisation utilised in almost all good graphic design for things such as logos or icons. It doesn't really matter what the subject is - gears, or other kinds of illustration. It's not really about functionality/realism, rather about aesthetics and what looks good given the constraints of various viewing conditions or use cases.

Here are some examples below demonstrating some of the problems. This shows why simplification/stylisation is often preferable to something realistic/complex, especially problematic at smaller sizes. Graphics are often designed to work at larger scales as well as smaller scales, in a variety of colours, from simple line graphics to filled/coloured shapes, and so graphic designers generally have to be wary of overly complex graphics which will just end up looking like fuzzy/indistinguishable blobs at very small sizes.

Click to view larger

Answer 2

Form v function...

For a designer..... the Function would be a visual metaphor. The Form (if gears would work) is unimportant.

For an engineer that's reversed - an engineer would be concerned if the gears would work (Function).. it doesn't matter how they look (Form).

Designers are concerned with how things look, how easy things read, how dynamic things appear. In most cases... It honestly does not matter if gears would actually be functional, they just need to look nice and maintain overall design continuity.

I wouldn't chalk this up to "laziness"... at least not that I've seen.. ignorance, perhaps. Realistically it can be a lack of software knowledge regarding how to achieve accuracy.. or time constraints preventing the acquisition of the necessary software knowledge. In fact, you'll find often there's merely 1 gear/sprocket that has just been copied and resized. I think all your examples show this.

Most designers/illustrators I know are fully aware when they have gears which would not actually function (Most, not all.).... "they still convey moving / tools / working / thinking.... that's all I need. Go away!"

• If I draw a table, I don't worry about showing dovetail joints.. or screws.. or nails.... or glue...
• If I draw a bell, I don't worry that the clanger is sized correctly based on the bell circumference....
• If I draw a rocket ship, I don't worry that the structure is aerodynamically correct or even feasible...
• If I draw a microphone... I don't worry that the wire mesh covering one end is the correct spacing and proportion as related to real world microphones...

... I just draw what looks good and works for my needs. It just has to look like what I intend. It's not a blue print or schematic.

I would only concern myself with functional gears if working on a piece that is destined to be seen by engineers, mechanics, etc... readers that would be fully aware of mechanical flaws in artwork. Just as if working on a medical piece, if I draw a stethoscope, scalpel, etc., I ensure they are accurate as they relate to the overall style of a piece.

Ultimately, functional gears or not greatly depends upon the intended audience. I used a gear image today in fact.. but it was for a financial piece ... a piece where no one is expecting some mechanical apparatus to be part of the pitch. It's inherently understood to be a metaphor. Therefore gear accuracy was unimportant.

Although the image I used had no connotation of anything turning and connecting - which is most often what I'll do.. If I know gears/sprockets aren't actually functional, I configure them so it's abundantly clear they are non-functional and not just an idiot oversight were functionality is concerned. - I don't use images like your examples, head-on flat views. I intentionally always turn artwork like this to a 3/4 view or some other, more interesting, angle where "connectivity" is either hidden or clearly not viable.

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Also.. ya gotta factor in the the non-artist, "I just need a feakin' icon, man" users. It's not only "designers" creating icons... I've seen some horrifically inaccurate objects in "logos" lately all because AI Image Generation has grown more popular. Just yesterday.. a Bike shop logo with a Bicycle that was completely non-functional, not only due to the sprocket but the handlebars and pedals as well!

Answer 3

_{Disclaimer: This answer, too long to be a comment has definitely sarcasm.}

//sarcasm mode on

Gee. I wonder why icons of people very often do not have ears, eyes, noses, or mouths. Oh, people also have teeth! I wonder why designers do not put them on an icon.

And those archaic methods of sending messages... A letter envelope? Oh... those lazy designers who do not understand that electronic messages are made of bits and not paper.

A gear to denote configuration? Another no, no. A gear is not configured, it is manufactured and has its own tolerances built in. It can not be configured!

//sarcasm mode off

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Another possible, just maybe, a remote reason. Abstraction

• the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events.

• something which exists only as an idea.

• freedom from representational qualities in art.

I could throw in some other terms like semiotics and aesthetic function. (There are different types of functionality)

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But exploring this question is a bit more interesting than I initially thought.

People in general do not care how something works as long as it does. There is an interesting exercise. Draw a bike where something that people actually see (gears are often covered inside a case) is drawn with no basic functional logic.

The same could be said about User Interfaces in general, or using a computer every day, even using a light switch or opening the water faucet.

I am mentioning this to encourage a lazy society, just to denote that visual communication should aim to balance different elements, it is hardly accurate. It needs "interpretation" from the user (semiotics).

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We could even think about written languages. Even the letters we are using right now, like the letter "A" are a misrepresentation of a cow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A

You can think that some Ideographic written languages are also abstractions or simplifications of real-life things.

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And now this should be a comment because it is anecdotal: I studied some years of Mechanical Engineering before switching to Graphic Design; both at the university level, and really, I, never, ever would try to make a functional gear drawing, or face, or anything as an icon.

Some icons are uglier than others, true. But are some more "functional" than others? If an engineer wants to use an icon as a diagram or mechanical plan, the one who needs to change another career path is the engineer (And that was not the reason why I did it n_n)

Answer 4

Symbols are symbols and they can be interpreted in many ways, but still a normal person will see a gear, regardless of the accuracy being present or absent.

You can stick your finger in the sand and draw up a gears icon, and most people will still recognize what that symbol is.

Also, there's alot of superficiality and reduction in mainstream icon production. As with anything in stock imagery, the focus goes on quantity over quality, and the mathematical accuracy is not always a concern, not for the designers, and probably not for the users either.

This goes for any type of icon really, not just gears. Eg. if you look up a basic thumbs up icon, 8 out of 10 you will see these distorted variations of a thumbs up icon.

Also, the people mass-producing these icons are not always actual designers, more like people collecting stuff from one place, reshaping and reposting in another place.

Answer 5

Obviously if the gears aren't touching, they won't be serving their purpose.

Why are you assuming that the purpose is that they rotate together? The icon is often used for configuration settings: it says, here's a bunch of gears, pick the one that works best for your purpose!

Do you want more torque? Go ahead and pick the big one; if not, pick the smaller one.

Frankly, I started writing this answer as tongue-in-cheek, but then I realized that other configuration icons follow similar logic. For example, multiple tools, or tools and gears.

The message seems to be: "here's a bunch of small, finicky things to tweak", not "here's the innards of the website"

Answer 6

Well there are 2 likely issues (appart them not being mechanical engineers):

1. They have never thought about the issue at all. Thing is the gears depicted wouldn't work anyway. I mean often graphic designers draw gears that are not even trapezoidal, those can not work on different teeth counts.

   But in your example picture looks more like a sprocket than a gear, which is relatable because sprockets are more commonly visible as they are commonly visible in bikes. So in fact its not a gear at all.

2. They are not aiming for likness as such but ease of reading. So it does not really have to work like a gear.

   (even if 1 were true they would claim number 2 anyway)

Most likely both of these at the same time.

Realistically most people dont know how gears work. Many times you we a animated gear train with 3 gears. Well yes while idler gears are a thing thats not exactly how gear trains work.

This applies to art in general whenever you see thechnology depicted in art (except mecha anime) its usually aiming to look like plausible technology. Not be plausible technology. Same applies to a lot of other stuff too. Like like flowers and foilage for example. But this is also why AI systems are so successful, most people wouldnt notice the details.

PS: ive spent years on thinking about this, partly because its my job to take art and turn it into physical technology.

Answer 7

Assuming the audience is too dumb to notice

If you consider "the audience" to be every person who might lay eyes on your design, then yeah, it's a risky assumption.

But in reality, as a designer, "the audience" are not the general audience viewing your work; they're the small handful involved signing your paycheck. If they are too dumb to notice, then the work is "good enough", for all intents and purposes.

The fact that you keep seeing these bad designs out in the wild suggests that the assumption is justified.

(There is also the distinct possibility that the original design did make sense, but some marketing exec insisted that the gears needed more teeth, and the designer's objections were shouted down at the next meeting...)