&gt;Our brains have this giant section dedicated to nothing but recognizing characters in our native written language. Sure we have a lot of brain power going to shape recognition in general, but character recognition is so incredibly trained in our heads that it should be our go to.<p>Yea, but you still have to <i>read</i> them, i.e. focus this &quot;machinery&quot; on a single word&#x2F;sentence. So you&#x27;re working in sequence when trying to identify a bunch of unrelated labels. On the contrary, you can probably differentiate an entire group of icons just by a glance in their direction (provided they are appropriately designed, of course).<p>Plus reading speed is pretty much the same no matter how many times you repeat the task. Recognition on the other hand improves with repetition.<p>If you&#x27;re using only text, you&#x27;re pretty much stuck with being able to differentiate your icons either by location or by actually reading them. Icons add another component to this.<p>Totally agree with the color-related comment though.<p>IANANS btw, so your mileage may vary.