Back around 2008, I was helping with a Powerpoint presentation on the infamous WHIMIS label and all the variations on things that are safety cautious.

I can only wonder why an important set of images are so horrible. They must be based off, as an old friend would say, “the image looked like a photoengraving of a facsimile [FAX] of a photocopy”.

The pictograms are most likely reproduced from old hand drawn originals and printed “repos” that were copied over and over until the detail is gone or distorted. Paste up artists would often reuse images from 2nd or 3rd generations, then retouch the printed material, then photostat [large camera and repasted quick-print] it back into production. This analog reprocessing degraded the quality over and over, often until images were often unrecognizable.

Here are my versions of the WHIMIS 2015 [Canadian] pictograms, redrawn for better detail for size reduction and printability and recognition.

“Generation loss” is defined as:

“Generation loss is the loss of quality between subsequent copies or transcodes of data. Anything that reduces the quality of the representation when copying, and would cause further reduction in quality on making a copy of the copy, can be considered a form of generation loss. File size increases are a common result of generation loss, as the introduction of artifacts may actually increase the entropy of the data through each generation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_loss

The pictograms are usually used at a small size on WHIMIS labels on industrial chemical containers. I needed them for a PowerPoint and projected on a number of screenings for a large audience. To do it best, the images had to be redrawn. I did quite a number of industrial and safety icons, but the WHIMIS used today [since 2015] are available here. WHIMIS 2015 Canadian set includes PNG images [pixel] and PDF [vector] that are large but can be easily rescaled without loss of detail. The black diamond versions would only be used for B&W prints.

You’re welcome to use them, but they are my own versions so you might have to get approval. Let me know in the contact page if you can use them.

If you like, buy me a coffee sometime.

Here’s a collection of photos from a walk-about mid October.

This carving is from the early 2000’s. Some found wood that was heavily cracked and split along the length. It is about 5ft. long. I epoxied the heavier breaks, then carved the exaggerated ‘flow’ of the grain.

The blue apatite stones were added this month. In the event of moving and children and activity, the stick was broken along some of the more delicate wave forms. I added the stones mostly to support some of the thinner ‘waves’. It will go back on the wall away from little hands for awhile [I hope]. As it turned out I think the stones help the feeling of movement in the lines of the waves and the colour brightens things up as well.

When I can create some new working space I may get back into more stick carving