Photoshopping Street Signs
Jesus, my little attempt at street sign defacement may not have been all that great (although to be honest the sign I based it on wasn’t all that either - check out the difference in kerning between the “LK” and the “LE” in Walkley) but at least it was a hell of a lot better than the BBC’s pathetic try. And I didn’t even use the right font - I couldn’t be arsed to track it down at the time, but have since found out thanks to JC that you can get the transport, motorway and pavement fonts for free here with information on usage here. He also sent me this snippet on the fonts’ origins from www.designertradingcards.com:
Kinneir and Calvert’s designs for British roads were not only practical,
they exhibited a warmth and humanity lacking in signage in some other
countries. The ‘Transport’ sans serif font they designed has a ’soft’ feel,
their pictograms, such as the ‘children’ warning sign, were sensitively
drawn. A lot of the original work is still in use today and, indeed, the
Department of Transport was able to turn to original artwork and layout
instructions when it digitised the signs a few years ago.
Most importantly, the work was done at a time when, in the words of author
Robin Kinross, there was an ‘official will to modernise the public
infrastructure,’ which led it to becoming a rare model of the role that
design could play in public life. Although the Department is still using the
basic design, it has a regrettable tendency to add unnecessary extra clutter
(such as brown panels for tourist information).The message for us today is how Kinneir started. He looked from the
perspective of a driver, not a designer: ‘What do I want to know, trying to
read a sign at speed?’ It’s that clarity of thought which makes his work a
remarkable contribution to modern design.