Road signs and an ageing population
A quarter of our population will be over 65 by 2026* and we are living longer, most of us will want to continue driving. Are our road signs designed to cope?
Research from the US has shown that their signs caused problems for older drivers and recommendations were made to produce much larger signs…
“The size of characters on all signs must be increased by at least 30%, which means 1 inch of character height to 38 feet of sight distance, versus the MUTCD standard of 1 inch for 50 feet. This would accommodate motorists testing 20/30 on the standard eye chart…” (Greene, et al 1996)
Thankfully, designers took an interest in the problem and rather than produce much larger signs they devised a more efficient typeface (font) to counter the effects of modern roads and an ageing population.
You can read more about the effects of halationhere.
*Central Statistics Office, CSO, Ageing in Ireland, 2007
Road users find new design clearer than old
In tests, a majority of English speaking road users chose colour-differentiated languages in the test typeface design over Ireland’s existing signs, and over UK-style signs as used in Wales.
The new proposal with the Turas test typeface (font), shown left, is designed to preserve the shape of words, an important factor in word recognition at speed, and to resist the negative effects on signs caused by modern headlights. Each letter shape has been optimised for this purpose.
Research findings - with Irish language speakers
Above: Slides from the screen-based test asking users to choose the clearer sign of two on each slide. Designs that were tested included the colour differentiated design using Turas my experimental road sign typeface, Clearview Hwy the new US design, the undifferentiated sign design used in Wales and the current Irish sign design, which uses uppercase English words beneath an inclined ‘italic’ Irish language typeface.
Comparative testing of designs for clarity
Having researched the issues and developed an initial prototype design solution I constructed a simple test showing comparative examples of existing versus alternative signage solutions. This article deals with the results of the Irish language speaking test group.
Read More...Creating and testing design variants
Finding a research-led design solution for Ireland’s dual-language road signs - a brief design journey.
World Tour
I first created many sketch sign layouts using commonly used typefaces which fitted the criteria of high x-height and suitability for signs. These rough tests were created to explore colour differentiation and compare this with other ways of differentiating the languages including weight difference, uppercase and italics.
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National Identity
Are there implications of road sign design for national identity?
Intentionally designing style attributes into road sign types is contrary to best practise, the focus must remain on clarity. But it is notable that motorway signs become a visible expression of national identity. I would argue that this even more the case in countries with dual-language signs. Margaret Calvert, co-designer of Transport mentions this unintentional by-product in relation to the design of the UK’s signs…
Read More...We never thought of it as a corporate identity, because a corporate identity is not just signs, but if you see it everywhere, it is part of the look of Britain. For me, and this is speaking of London, it goes with red buses and black cabs. (Poynor et al. 2004)
Signs are getting bigger
What's wrong with this sign?
These are signs showing the effects of ‘halation’…
Halation is the effect of headlights hitting a highly reflective material used in modern signs. This causes an overglow, which can make the sign difficult to read, this is particularly challenging for older users.
Differentiation of languages in sign design
Bilingual ‘time delay’…
Wales’ bilingual solution takes longer to read than a one-language sign (Rutley 1972). This is not surprising, because increased information on a sign increases comprehension time. And the time is increased further, especially for English-speaking drivers, when Welsh is placed above English.
It does suggest the importance of differentiating our Irish place names from the English. In view of the status of the Irish language, how is a level of differentiation best achieved, whilst preserving ‘equal prominence’? 
Above: Welsh/English sign
Read More...Developments in directional road sign design
In the design of signs, in general, and more particularly road signs, international practise has pointed the way…
A reasonable proposition, in improving Ireland’s sign design, is to address the design of the actual type used. It has long been held by type designers that increased x-height is beneficial to typeface designs for signage. Since the 1960s, design for signage typefaces has concentrated on this and other factors of clarity – all notable new designs address x-height. In Ireland, where we’d be replacing the relatively larger uppercase words in English, use of increases x-height would be particularly applicable.
Above: A classic type, Caslon (left), has it’s x-height (height of the lowercase) compared to Transport (centre) and Clearview Hwy, the recent US road sign type. This illustrates the increased x-height of the Transport design, and how this has been surpassed by the Clearview design.
Read More...The use of English on Ireland's signs
All uppercase versus lowercase – readability and practicality
When upper- and mixed-case words occupied the same sign area Forbes and his colleagues found a significant improvement in reading distance with the mixed-case words.” (Garvey 2006)
Above: Illustrates the advantage of upper and lowercase over all uppercase – in terms of word shapes produced. Both words occupy the same sign area.
Read More...Irish as a 'foreign' language
“Italic is sometimes used for secondary information, as in France. I haven’t seen that anywhere else. More often it is a light [weight] beside a regular, or medium roman that is given this job. [See] Schiphol airport and several other airports, such as Reykjavik, Iceland.” Gerard Unger (Reil 2006)
Foreign language faux pas?
Unger’s comment about ‘secondary information’ is incisive, the Irish language appears devalued by setting in Italics. In general typographic use – italics are employed for very specific purposes – most commonly for a use of a foreign language expression.
Old Irish meets modern European
Letter confusion – old Irish meets modern European…
Inexpert handling of drawing new letters is likely to cause confusion – an uppercase faux Irish ‘A’ (In lowercase style) and a lowercase ‘i’ without a dot are examples of this confusion in the design of the ‘Irish language italic’ in Ireland’s bilingual road signs.
Characters commonly mistaken for each other (Jury 2002) must receive particular attention from the designer of road signs, this is confirmed by (Spencer et al. 1973b). Lowercase ‘a’ and ‘o’ are cited as such problematic letter forms. Even if this re-design of the type were well executed, it is inappropriate to create stylised letter shapes. Unusual letter forms are likely to inhibit readability of place names. Moreover, in common usage Irish is set in contemporary typefaces and this should be reflected in signs.Read More...
Some background on the evolution of the UK's signs
A little of the history of the UK’s road signs.
Looking at the UK’s National Archive I was struck with the fact that the situation there could have been very different, were it not for the intervention of one or two decisive individuals...
“...it has long been my belief that we would do best to submit all our proposed traffic signs to a consultant industrial artist, who is a expert on lettering. I know it can be argued that, having adopted an alphabet, all the rest is merely routine. I know too that a special relationship has been built up between the Ministry and the sign manufacturers, which introduction of a third party in the form of a consultant would complicate. Nevertheless it is remarkable what a good designer can do to the appearance of simple things, as any attentive reader to the productions of the Council of Industrial Design must know. A decision to appoint a consultant of this kind would not be popular in the Department, but outside it would, I believe, be well received.” (Allen, National Archives, 1957)
It appears, unfortunately, there was no such champion of design in Ireland, but here I’ll outline a few points around the genesis of the UK solution.
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The reduced status of Irish – made visible
Reduced status of Irish made visible.
In the context of the government’s statement on language, following are examples of how the current road sign design effects the reduced status of Irish relative to English…
The relatively larger size of upper case words…
Above: Illustrates the greater space occupied by the same legend set in all upper case.
A consideration in the light of government’s regulation and aspirations for the Irish language is the fact that words in upper case occupy 40% more area (Jury 2002) and are thereby more prominent than lowercase. While this achieves a level of differentiation with the Irish place name, it is at the expense of the relative prominence of the Irish.
It is hard to see how this can be argued to give equal status to Irish. It certainly is not in keeping with the spirit of the regulation…
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The origins of our road sign design
Our system as it stands…
The Transport type (UK), used in Irish road signs, is intended for Upper and Lowercase use, and no italic version was designed by its originators. Ireland, however, employs italics for Irish Place names and all uppercase English names. Irish is set above the English.How did we get here?
Ireland adopted the Transport type designed for UK roads by Jock Kinneir, a design lecturer at the Royal College of Art, and Margaret Calvert, his assistant, in the late 1950’s and early 1960s; it has since achieved recognition as something of a design classic and became the model upon which many national road sign schemes are based. There is a good summary of the process at the Design Museum’s website. There’s also a little here around the controversy which surrounded its evolution.“This is a true design success story, a typeface so clear and legible most people don’t realise it has been designed at all” (Greer, 2006)
So, where did it all go wrong? …
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Legal context of Ireland's road signs
Irish road sign design in legal context
The law
Alongside the design context of Ireland’s road signs, the sign system lives in the context of national legislation. But as the design context has changed – not least with our first national high speed roads nearing completion – the legislative context has also changed.
The issue of prominence
The Government’s Statement on Language promises equal status for Irish but the reality of our road signs effectively renders it a secondary language.
The first shall be last?
In the Official Languages Act 2003, (Section 9) Regulations 2008, special care is taken to ensure Irish is principally prominent in signs…
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