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Comment by STRiDEX | Hacker News Reader

I read some designers discussing the filter icon usually being a funnel which doesn't do much filtering. It does funnel something into something. https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=filter interesting to see the other options that show up.

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Here's an idea; four arrows moving right, towards a line. The line has a hole in it, only allowing one of the arrows to pass through. Demonstrates filtering and doesn't have any accidental significance from symmetry.

There's a somewhat more simplistic version of that on the above-linked results, which is four centered, horizontal lines, each decreasing in width from top to bottom, which I think communicates basically the right idea: you have a much of this thing up here, but you can get less of that thing down here by clicking this (maybe). Conceptually speaking I like it more than a funnel, but it still needs a text label to convey the right thing.

There's also a literal filter icon, which could only ever work at somewhat larger sizes due to the mesh. Without knowing that the context of the search results is that of "filter", however, you probably wouldn't know what it was by simply looking at it.

Funnels are used for filtering all the time, think coffee, lab equipment, etc. The parameters of the filter - i.e the mesh - are what you are choosing to go in the funnel.

When I was studying organic chemistry we'd use funnels as filters all the time. I suppose most people wouldn't know about that though.

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