Road signs — a story of typeface wars, big egos and crazy usability tests
A design solution needs to be obvious and unobtrusive. In complex situations, poor design can be life-threatening. This is especially true on our roads. Read the story of how our modern road network got its road signs: a thrilling tale of typeface warfare, egos and crazy usability tests.
The people behind the signs
United Kingdom, 1958: It is clear, given the strong increase in motoring, that something must be done about the country’s outdated road signs. They are a hard-to-read jumble of colours, shapes and typography, originally designed to be read from horseback. Design magazine Typographica publishes several articles criticising the signs. The people now tasked with developing and implementing a new system of typefaces, colours, shapes and pictograms for the motorway network are Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. They have previously collaborated on the design of a well-received signage system for the recently built Gatwick airport. Their preliminary work is erected on a section of road for testing and evaluation — and is very well received by most people. But not by designer David Kindersley. He hates the typeface of the new signs with a passion. In a letter to The Times, he expresses his abhorrence of the “signs as big as houses”. Kindersley starts working on his own solution, with a homemade typeface based on uppercase letters.
Oxfordshire, 1959: At Benson airfield, some serious-looking men in suits have gathered together. It is time to decide which design solution is best. Lined up on a podium sits a group of airmen, on the premise that they are good at seeing and noticing things. Further down the runway, a tiny British car sets off at a pace. A slightly absurd usability test is underway. On the roof of the tiny car is strapped a huge board with a road sign attached to it. This astonishing sight whizzes past the airmen at high speed and in just a few seconds the first part of the test is complete. The scene is repeated twice more with alternative road signs. The results of the test are evaluated mathematically and scientifically but are best expressed by one of the pilots: “Kindersley’s letters were damned ugly!”. Kinneir and Calvert can now continue to work on their vision undisturbed.
London, 1963: A government report is published that recommends radical change and modernisation for road signs on all the country’s roads, not just motorways. According to the report, this should also involve harmonisation with the road signs in the rest of Europe. Kinneir and Calvert are once again entrusted with the task and they work to expand the design system to cover the entire road network. The team’s monumental design work still endures over half a century later and has provided an example for similar work in many other countries, including Sweden. The system has been expanded and supplemented since, but the design principles remain unchanged to this day.
Elk theft & winter special in Sweden
The road signs in Sweden are similar to those in the rest of Europe. It’s no coincidence. The UN regulates this through a convention to facilitate cross-border traffic. We do have some obvious exceptions though. For example, yellow is used as the background colour of prohibitory and warning signs because this colour is more visible in winter. Otherwise, we are generally in line with the rest of Europe.
Kåge Gustafson is probably the designer who has had his work stolen more than any other. He is the man behind the “Beware of elk” sign, much loved by the Germans, which has been taken down and stolen all over the country. His work also includes the Swedish pedestrian crossing sign and a long list of other road signs. During his many years at the Swedish Road Administration and the National Road Safety Administration, he not only drew images, but also designed the typeface that is still used on our Swedish signs today: Tratex. The letters are specially designed for optimum readability on the roads.
In the 1970s, reflective signs were introduced in Sweden. In the dark, these lighter blue signs were much more visible. However, the reflections created a halo effect that made the text harder to read. Engineer Chester Bernsten got to grips with the problem. Tests were conducted outside Borlänge that produced ideas for improvements. The work resulted in some adjustments to the Tratex typeface, new guidelines for what signs should look like in different conditions, when capital letters should be used and when not. Tratex has now also been updated to include Sami characters.
The signs in front of the people
So how did things actually turn out in the UK? The road sign work of Kinneir and Calvert can be divided easily into four different parts: colour, shape, typography and pictogram. The need for the end result to be in harmony with the road network throughout the rest of Europe was an important factor from the very beginning and so stipulated a few parameters. The basic shapes, with a triangle for warnings and a circle for orders, for example, were clear. There were also already some guidelines on colours. However, this did not prevent the team from nailing up signs in Hyde Park in order to observe the different colour and size combinations “out in the natural environment”. The most interesting elements, however, would be the typography and images.
The task before them did not just mean replacing the outdated, hard-to-read signs with existing typefaces, but required a radical rethink. The signs had to be clear and easy to read, of course, but achieving this required a great deal of research, testing and revisions. The adoption of a stern German typeface had previously been suggested — designed by engineers, not graphic designers! — but that idea had been shot down. A German invasion of the English countryside? Never! Inspired by typefaces such as Akzidenz Grotesk (the grandfather of Helvetica), Kinneir and Calvert developed a brand-new typeface, specifically optimised for modern road signs. To give the whole thing a more homegrown feel, elements were borrowed from the ultra-English Johnston Underground typeface. Several trials and versions were needed in order to get the characters just right. Finally, a new typeface by the name of Transport was born.
What makes Transport stand out is its ability to create clear word forms even when the individual characters are far apart. The text has to be readable from long distances, as well as in the sun’s glare and in reflected headlights in the dark. Guidelines were drawn up on how to achieve the clearest text positioning on signs. The typeface has a warmth and personality that is created by its round shape and the way the characters are designed. It was so successful that Transport is still used today and has also found its way onto road signs in several other countries, including Denmark.
Despite their work on Transport, it was important to both Kinneir and Calvert to develop a system that, as far as possible, communicated information visually through clear and representative symbols, called pictograms. A picture is worth a thousand words, but only if it is clear and obvious. Margaret Calvert, who designed many of the new symbols, has spoken of her dissatisfaction with the signs of the past. The old warning sign for a school showed a boy in the foreground like an illustration from Enid Blyton, which felt very passé. The new signs were to be more modern, more human and clearer. The motif was changed to a plucky modern girl leading her younger brother by the hand and is based on an actual photo of Calvert as a little girl.
Margaret Calvert.
Many of the signs have become classics in the UK and have been given their own nicknames. Today, octogenarian Calvert is still annoyed that the warning sign for roadworks is called “Man opening umbrella”, because you can’t get the image out of your head once you’ve seen it that way. Another classic is the sign for uneven road, which shows two round and voluptuous… mounds. Overall, though, Calvert did a very successful job of creating pictograms that are clear but still have human warmth. Lines and curves are also designed to be a good visual match for the text of the signs. There is a personality and sense of movement and proportion that are lacking in the rather rough-and-ready signs of many other countries.
The same approach can be found in Kåge Gustafson’s Swedish signs. In 1955, he designed his first road sign, the pedestrian crossing sign. That was followed by over 200 more and he continued to design even after retirement. The guidelines were that all pictograms had to be simple, self-explanatory and easy to interpret and understand. Shortly after his retirement in 1979, Gustafson drew an alternative sign for a pedestrian crossing depicting a woman, because he thought there were too many signs that showed only men. It was not well received and today we still have hardly any road signs that depict a female, unless she is taking care of a child or is a child herself. Something to think about, as Gustafson did 40 years ago.
Unsung design heroes
Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert are unsung design heroes. They viewed their task purely from a user perspective. There were only two criteria: what information do I need as I drive at 70 miles per hour and when do I need it? Everything else was of lesser importance and the form always had to support the function. Sweden’s own Kåge Gustafson and Chester Bernsten are also worthy of note. Together they show that good design may not always be noticed, but it can still save lives and make our everyday lives so much easier. Spare a thought for them next time you see a road sign and think about the hard work that has gone into developing the seemingly obvious creation by the side of the road.
Johan Kuno, UX and Visual Designer at inUse
This text was originally written in Swedish.
