What do you qualify as testing? I would guess that their is a fair amount of unpublished testing done.

ChrisL

FWIW: I’ve been working with signage for some time; wayfinding and room identification in educational and office buildings. I’m a bit skeptic about “proof” that some typeface is better suited for signage that another. Testing and research always implies in limiting a problem to certain conditions; you can proof that something works better than another thing, but only under certain conditions. The good thing about scientific studies, though, is that we can use them as reference, being most useful when discussing a project with a colleague or a client.

FWIW2: Usually these are considered to be the main features of a typeface for signage: sans-serif, big x-height, open apertures, big counters and medium weight (somewhere between regular and bold).

>Any others?

On his site, Montalbano now has up Rawlinson Roadway, a serif font for road signs approved for federal roads (national parks?). He says that it has also been tested, with similar successful results to Clearview.

So I think the ’san-serif’ part of Eduardo’s specification needs to be modified.

I also noticed that London’s Heathrow Airport now has a serif face for way finding. —Is it a variation of Charter? Does anyone know about this? I don’t like it that much (I like Rawlinson Road better), but it works well.

Here’s the link

Rawlinson Roadway has been up on our site since it launched several years ago. The font that the Park Service is using has been renamed NPS Roadway, because I didn’t want to give up the trademark on Rawlinson, and in order for the Feds to approve the font, I had to release all trademark rights. A revised website is under development and will have more info on the Roadway font, as well as the ability to license our Rawlinson Roadway design.

James,
Is your site down or is it just the link in Typophile that does not work for me?
I tried to check out your font.

ChrisL

James,
It must be the Typophile link, I got there fine straight from my browser.

Rowlinson is quite nice by the way—and so is your site! Nice interface design!

ChrisL

Chris, which link didn’t work for you? The link in William’s post worked for me. I’ve noticed if you don’t include the http:// and the www. it sometimes doesn’t work.

Tiff,
If you click on the link from the Terminaldesign user account and click on “home page” you have the problem. There is no http:// showing there and that may be the problem. This may be the way James typed it in when he did his profile.

ChrisL

I’m also not a big fan of the type used at Heathrow. Clarendon however, I consider to be as legible as Helvetica.

I’m just curious what makes people usually always default to Helvetica or Frutiger. In 25 years there haven’t been any other alternatives? (With the exception of James’ faces.)

There also seem to be different schools of thought on signage legibility:
1) All wayfinding signage should be sans serif
2) Wayfinding signage can use any “reasonably legible” typeface
3) Larger x-heights increase legibility
4) The best sans serifs for wayfinding signage actually incorporate serifs or pseudo-serifs (see: Vialog (Linotype), FF Info Display, Jock Kinneir’s Transport, Clearview Highway)
5) True sans serifs (no previously mentioned features) are sufficient enough

As you can see those are definitely conflicting details. What do you all think?

I’m just curious what makes people usually always default to Helvetica or Frutiger. In 25 years there haven’t been any other alternatives? (With the exception of James’ faces.)

I’m just guessing here, but it might have something to do with what’s available in ready-made die-cut vinyl letters. A great deal of the signage in the DC Metro system is done with peel-and-stick.

BTW, DC has Clarendon signage out the wazoo...very popular in the 50s, when a lot of Fderal buildings and signage got their last major facelift.

I’m with Terry, asking why there are such conventions around which kinds of typefaces are deemed legible for signage. To me, axioms like “Sans serif is best for signs” and “Serif type is more readable than Sans” are just parroted assumptions, not empirically true. Clearview is an enormous improvement over the original, engineered faces, but I have an idea that there is more yet to be discovered about which typefaces are most clear, useful, quickly read, etc. in wayfinding situations. In fact, my theory depends on ignoring, destroying or transcending the perceived opposition between serif and sans. I will prepare some test characters soon and post them.

> “Serif type is more readable than Sans” are just parroted assumptions

Often, yes, but not always. Like when I say it, it’s because of a combination of empirical and anecdotal evidence. I say it because it makes sense.

Also, equally parroted is hogwash like “we read best what we read most”.

hhp

David Kindersley was convinced that upper case serif was easier to read on a sign than upper and lower case sans serif. Have a look at this article by Kindersley:

http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/wartoworboys/4.shtml

The impression I get from Kindersley is that Transport, the sans serif u&lc font, was chosen because it was trendy at the time to use “Swiss-looking” sans serifs (hence Transport is an iteration of Akzidenz Gtotesk with occasional alterations to aid legibility) and not because of any inherent legibility qualities in the font itself. However, if you’d just had your font rejected by people who didn’t really understand your craft and someone else’s work was going to appear on the signs across the nation, you might want to push your point a bit. I guess as an apprentice to Eric Gill, and a lover of stone cutting, he probably thought that a ’grotesque’ solution was just that.

For reference, the Transport fonts (Kinneir/Calvert) used in the United Kingdom can be found here:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_control/documents/contentserve...

As far as legibility testing itself is concerned, it can ultimately only solve the problem of finding which of two existing fonts is more legible. It doesn’t necessarily point you in the right direction for the optimum. So font A may be more legible than font B, but font C (yet to be designed) may look completely different from A and B but perform much better under controlled testing conditions. Unfortunately testing didn’t really help your endeavour to devise font C. I assume you want to design the optimum font rather than simply establish which is the best existing font. Testing may not help.

Optimal legibility only really applies on highways, where you don’t have much time to read. Otherwise, given responsible typographic handling (as well as an awareness of environmental “wear and tear”), most typefaces may be used for signage.

(However, train station names could be done in really long signs with hyperextended fonts, so you can read them when you’re whizzing through at high speed. I’ve never seen this, but surely somewhere in the world has done it?)

Otherwise, I believe it’s more important to get some brand differentiation going with your signage. Like, this is a unique place, not just another mall/town full of franchises. And for wayfinding, unless it’s on a university campus, signage is going to be competing for eyespace with commercial signage, so why not use a different kind of type to what appears there? This is the same principle that periodical art directors often use, so that their editorial pages don’t look like ads.

One of the pleasures of relocating to Norwich has been the street signs here, which are cast iron, in a Victorian sans serif.

> you can read them when you’re whizzing through at high speed

Note that vision behaves very differently depending on whether the subject is moving or not: when looking at a mass of stationary objects, we saccade; but when looking at something that’s moving, the eyes “track” it smoothly. Yes, Science, sorry. However, how this affects reading I don’t know for sure. But I have a hunch we’re not attuned to reading moving things well; I suspect we switch between saccading and tracking, not getting good info to “process”.

BTW, I’m talking about lateral movement here: driving directly towards a highway sign is saccade-based, although I suspect as parallax increases reading starts breaking down. In fact James has equated highway fonts with text fonts; personally, although I see some similarities, the difference I think is that true immersive reading uses the parafovea. And I personally prefer to use my parafovea for spotting cops using on-ramps. :-)

hhp

Note that vision behaves very differently depending on whether the subject is moving or not

And sometimes our vision behaves differently when the subject is NOT moving; take a look at this; it’s an entirely static image.

Hrant,

What research can you point us toward re: reading/legibility in these wayfinding situations? Nick brings up something interesting: On a highway, movement is much more a factor. Other factors come into play in a train station, or inside a train.

I heard from a friend who visited Japan that they’ve used those silly blinking LED sticks to good effect in the subway: When the train goes by, the images they generate are stretched out and revealed, not by the viewer’s waggling head, but by the speed of the train. So riders get pictures flashed at them. Unfortunately I don’t think the pictures are very compelling, but it’s interesting to think about how to make a signal/sign/image appear clearly to someone in a moving vehicle.

Signs made for static viewing and viewing in motion can have different concerns. Being in a car whizzing by at 75 mph is different than merely walking up to a sign, or is there really a difference?

Sign placement also seems to be something to also take into account. Coming towards words printed on a sign I’m sure would yield different results than signs facing perpendicular to the mode of travel.

I forgot:
> I believe it’s more important to get some brand
> differentiation going with your signage.

I agree.

—

Carl, I haven’t focused on signage research - James should know tons about that though. That said, a lot of the more fundamental research efforts (like measurements of single letter decipherment, at various distances - a common theme) are applicable to virtually any reading task.

BTW, one great place to look for leads is Herbert Spencer’s “The Visible Word”.

hhp

Nick J., I read the links that you posted. I think its interesting that two different avenues can be justified by the same study. Maybe there is no real proof that sans serif is better than serif or vice versa? Another thing to take into account is that people “scan” signs, and don’t really read them. So what’s easiest to “scan” quickly in an environment would yield different results than “reading” under table lamp.

What makes you think people don’t read signs? “Scan” is a term better left to describe the activity of looking for something specific among a mass of objects. In text, this is usually when you look for a name or number. So for scanning, fonts with prominent capitals and numerals help; leading is less important; what else?

Admittedly, on a highway very often a driver is “scanning” a sign for a street name he knows is there - he just wants to know where to exit. I think that just speeds up recognition at a distance - without affecting the nature of the recognition. But maybe it’s more complex than that.

hhp

“What makes you think people don’t read signs?”

There’s a good amount evidence supporting this, its been documented. (See: Wayfinding: People, Signs and Architecture for one example). The other comes from basic observation. Most of the time when I ask people questions about signs, or information on them, most of the time they say: “oh, I didn’t see that.”

Most people I think just grab the bits of information they need and move on. Signs are short for a reason and don’t usually consist of several lines of text. Attention span, and the ability to absorb info quickly is why I feel signs aren’t read. The action of “reading” is quite different in nature.

“Most people I think just grab the bits of information they need and move on”

Isn’t that the nature of wayfinding? Once someone has found the info they need to proceed, they stop “reading/scanning” and move on.

ChrisL

I certainly agree that signs are not immersive reading. But I think “scan” is the wrong idea. When somebody “doesn’t see” something, it just means his subconscious didn’t think it was important enough to bring to consciousness’s attention. But when it is brought to attention, it is “read”, not “scanned”. At least the way I use the terms.

BTW, I feel that in immersive reading as well people “grab the bits of information they need”. It’s just that book text has a lot less redundacy, so you have to read -almost- everything. However, this heuristic nature does nicely explain why the parafovea (which is quite lo-res) is so useful in immersive reading, and why boumas exist.

hhp

A favorite quote of mine: “Illusions of the senses tell us the truth about perception.” — Johannes Evangelista Purkinje, discoverer of the eponymous Purkinje Effect).

>“Scan” is a term better left to describe the activity of looking for something specific among a mass of objects.<

Isn’t that what is happening in the subway or at an airport? Information goes from being narrative to being like objects. Icons and arrows become as functional and informative as type, when the choices are many and there’s no time to read each one. In this situation, I think we take broad, snapshot-like impressions and process them one at a time until we get ones we need to move on. I think the parafovea is working much harder then. We’re looking for large chunks. Big Boumas! ;D Of course this is in a situation where the signage program is thorough.

I think you’re right.
Still, “scan” to me means looking for something.
But I can change.

hhp

Maybe the word is “search”? or is that a rose is a rose as well.

ChrisL

“Search” seems too... conscious.

hhp

When you read text, you deal with whole words at a time. You don’t break words down to work out each word from its constituent characters (unless it’s new to you), you recognise words because of their shape. Ascenders and descenders help this part of the process. First and last characters of words are also important. Finally the rest of the characters in the word are needed if the other two criteria have not proved decisive. So you don’t “read” individual words as such, you only “recognise” them. “Reading” then is an overall process of “recognising” and “piecing together” multiple words/phrases and then transferring them into sensible thoughts.

On signs, you don’t “read” a destination in the same way as you read a paragraph of text, you merely perform the initial stage of the process, the “recognising” a word firstly from its shape, secondly from its first and last characters*, thirdly from the rest of the characters. It is an important distinction to make because, on a sign, you are not really concerned with the “piecing together” part of the reading process and far more concerned with making the individual words (and occasionally phrases) recognisable to the user.

The theory that upper and lower case is more helpful is based on the assumption that words are easier to recognise by their shape than by their constituent characters. There is however an argument that says upper case only is better because individual upper case letters are more distinctive. However, I would suggest that word shape is higher in the batting order than individual character distinctiveness.

__________________________________________________________

*On the subject of first and last characters in words, you may have seen this:

Aoccdrnig to a rseerach stduy at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

I don’t know if this was a real Cambridge University study but it’s interesting.

:) Interesting. I had virtually no trouble reading that paragraph. Save for the word “rest”. That word is tricky, the only way you could change it is to change the middle two letters...but doing that changes how it is sounded out in your mind. Cognitively, it jars the flow a smidge.

Hrant et al

Maybe the word is “recognise”. After all you can only recognise a face in a crowd if you “see” it. You may or may not have been deliberately looking for it but if you see it, chances are you’ll recognise it (if it’s a face you “know”).

The first thing signage has to do then is be recognisable as such. You need to “know” it’s a sign or it’s just another face in a crowd. Wayfinding is all about feeling secure. Nothing does that quite like seeing someone or something you know.

Nick, some people -especially these days- have stopped believing the “whole word” theory of reading; they’ve come to put -misguided- faith in what’s called the parallel-letterwise model, where words are indeed compiled (although not sequentially) through their constituent letters exclusively.

My own -admittedly ongoing- research has arrived at the conculsion that we read what I’ve come to call “bouma”s: these are sometimes whole whole words (ones that are very frequent and short), sometimes individual letters (in the fovea), but generally, they are clusters of letters. When you look at all the empirical data, take into account anecdotal evidence, and throw in beliefs about human cognition, it’s the only thing that makes sense - to me at least.

hhp

What I guess I’m saying is that you don’t “read” boumas as such.

I would define it as follows:
Reading = recognising boumas + piecing them together to make sensible thoughts

Isn’t wayfinding a matter of recognising boumas only (once you have worked out where to find them)?

One of the very few benefits derived from youthful indiscretions (otherwise known as taking psychoiactive drugs in the 60s) was a realization of the primacy of pattern recognition in human cognition. I doubt that anyone who hasn’t been there (either through drug use or psychosis) can fully appreciate the flood of sensory impressions that we receive every conscious second; the only way we can really navigate through this riot of sights, sounds, tastesm smells and touches is by employing pattern recognition to select useful, important or just familiar stimuli, and discard the rest. Reading isn’t any different.

The ’Cambridge University’ thing was discussed *extensively* a while ago. Search for the name ’Kevin Larson’, the research psychologist who joined the discussion at some point, to find the threads. He is, I believe, giving a talk at ATypI.

I think wayfinding often has very little to do with reading. Hrant, I think the approach you’re taking is purely typographic. What Carl was talking about I think is that symbols play a necessary role in wayfinding as well as typography. What I’m trying to approach (although I don’t know how possible) is to create a wayfinding system that is as universal (multilingual) as possible without typography confusing the issue. Words in context, mean more than words individually. For example since we’ve been using this word frequently:

READ

By itself, there is more than one meaning.

In some regard, speed really isn’t that much of a factor in highway signage. Certainly your are speeding towards a decision point and time is of the essence. But the signs you have to read aren’t really zipping by. They are “out there” somewhat in your field of view, but obscured by distance, darkness and/or atmospheric conditions.

But there must be a reason people worry about speed of decipherment. Otherwise switching to Clearview for example (or switching at all) is pretty hard to justify. And I think the reason is that in “boundary conditions”, like bad weather combined with being in an unfamiliar part of town/the_country, recognition time does matter; if you’re trying to decide to get into the exit lane or not, switching between reading the signs and minding the (non-confused) local traffic whizz by you, a fraction of a second can make or break it; you might hit somebody passing you on the right, or miss your exit and get frustrated (ie more likely to hit something).

And this is in fact quite similar to “regular” reading: you’re not always in a hurry to finish something you’re reading, but sometimes, yes you are. It’s just that the chance of dying is somewhat less. :-)

hhp

Time is the critical element. I was saying speed isn’t a factor since the sign is not zipping by. You are closing in on the decision point. The sign is in your field of view. The farther away you can read it the better. Sometimes when people discuss this topic they make it sound like all of these signs are zipping by them and they have to turn their heads to read they as they go flashing by. That is not how it works. Distance from the sign, how far away can you read it, that is all that matters. So legibility distances and recongnition distances are what the research tries to measure. The Clearview stuff is legible and more recognizable from farther away, that is why the switch is on.

OK, I get it now. And like I was musing above, I doubt we can read properly when parallax increases and speed (forward movement) causes notable lateral movement.

On the other hand, I think speed is a factor to the extent that it affects how long you have to decide if the sign says what you think, right? This is why people often slow down to read a sign... sometimes causing an accident.

hhp

Basically what I’m saying is that Speed, Time and Distance interact.

hhp

“Speed, Time and Distance interact.”
Didn’t a guy named Einstein fiddle with that once? :-)

ChrisL

Hey, I don’t drive that fast...

hhp

Yep, v=d/t (not sure if it was Einstein though - wasn’t he E=mc²?)

Since recognition of words, once you can view them clearly, is virtually instantaneous, the earlier you can do it, the better. In this case, speed of approach does not affect time taken to decipher anywhere near as much as the actual design of the characters on the sign, which is why ClearviewHwy and Transport are so good. You can “read” (recognise/scan/whatever...) them from much further away than their predecessors, so you have more time to make your decision.

In theory, the further away a sign is the less your speed affects the reading process (i.e. if you have a very big sign on the horizon, it’s going to be a lot easier to read than a little sign nearby that is moving quickly realtive to your car where your mind has to cope with the speed as well as the deciphering.

So, if you have to slow down to read a sign, there are several possibilities. Either:
- you’re not really concentrating
- you’re breaking the law
- the sign was positioned badly
- the sign was designed badly (and maybe the typeface used was badly designed)

In the case of UK roadsigns which are very clear and usually very well positioned, you were probably caning it or napping.

> Since recognition of words, once you can view
> them clearly, is virtually instantaneous

And this is exactly where signage is not immersive reading: in the parafovea (which I believe participates significantly in reading) stuff is not seen clearly; but the brain’s heuristics uses the information anyway.

> you were probably caning it or napping.

Or the weather could be bad. Did you say UK? :-)

Anyway, the point is people slow down to read signs sometimes.
And we shouldn’t be playing “survival of the fittest” with signage! :-)

hhp

“caning it”

Sorry, not familiar with that term, does that mean the same as “gunning” it?

caning it = whipping your car to make it go faster?

It doesn’t matter that our weather is awful... we’ve got Transport and Johnston.

Do you think the world has plateaued when it comes to signage typeface design? You’ve got to be pretty pleased with ClearviewHwy...

Well,....

For purposes of earlier recognition, Clearview has demonstrated superiority over the awful mechanical signage letters that preceded. Now that there’s something better to compare against, I find I hate looking at older highway signs. Those blobby e’s, those clotted B’s.

I do actually feel there is more that can be done to clarify, or sharpen, or aid recognition, of letters and the words they make up, on the level of typeface design. It won’t be an earth-shattering improvement; I think Clearview has made a great leap already. Nobody’s myopia will clear up suddenly. Still, I am interested in playing with all the possibilities in letter design and type design to maximize word recognition. I’ve done some test shapes, and I’ll make another variant this weekend, and share it. Terry has been sharing his ideas and findings in his research with me, and has got me intrigued with the possibilities again. The old sketches have come out.

Plateau? Not even close. Once we get over the preconceptions of what highway signage is “supposed” to look like, then we’ll finally be out of the chasm.

hhp

“Yep, v=d/t (not sure if it was Einstein though - wasn’t he E=mc²?)”

You are Generally correct but you could also theoretically be oh so Special :-)

ChrisL

“Once we get over the preconceptions of what highway signage is “supposed” to look like, then we’ll finally be out of the chasm.”

We also need to get past the preconception that all wayfinding signage has to do with “highways”. :)

Where is David Carson when you really need him?

Gerald

Highway signage is a special case. Even street name signs have a different function. For me they require more character to define the “place”. There seems like a long blurry path from highway to street to pedestrian to storefront to inside-building and so on down to the name on an office cubicle. The difference for me is communication vs. legibility. At 100 kilometers per hour on a strange highway at night just reading it quickly is the issue. While walking around a pedestrian shopping/dining area seeing the sights brings in more of the communication angle. I don’t think there is a formula, I just think designers have to approach way-finding as a much broader problem than just the readability of road signs at highway speeds.

ChrisL

One thing to remember, and it is one of the reasons ClearviewHwy looks the way it does, is the traffic engineering community is a very conservative bunch. Until our reseach showed that CearviewHwy was superior, they were perfectly happy with their FHWA Highway Gothic. If the next iteration is too radical in its appearence, it may be a very difficult journey towards acceptance. Also if the next big thing is too hard to manufacture (in the Highway would that would mean cutting it our of reflective material) because it contains too many subtile details, again it could be a difficult journey. (ClearviewHwy is a pretty conservative design, and it took 14 years to develop and be accepted)

John,
It seems to me that the decision makers for highway signage are most likely committees of government bureaucrats who only feel comfortable if they can just do what was done previously because of their “that is the way we have always done it” mentality. (They may only have contact with designers every decade or so when the signs wear out.)
I would be curious to know more on your method of educating them and how you finally got them to “see the light”.

By the way, it was a pleasure meeting you at TypeCon.

ChrisL

Hi Chris,

Its James actually. I suppose I should change my user name to be a little less obtuse.
We were lucky to get a few state DOT engineers to see the light. The PennDOT engineer Art Breneman was quoted as saying Clearview was the best thing to happen to the MUTCD in 30 years. That and the support of TEXDOT early on put the pressure on the Feds.

For fun, can anyone share pictures of unique or flavorful local signage systems they’ve seen? It could be a distinctive airport, bus or train station, or a museum or college campus. I keep wanting to go over to Sausalito and photograph their street signs, because they use a very unusual, almost psychedelic soft condensed face, and it’s now associated with that town for me. We need more of that.

James,

I’m sorry. My Father’s name was “James John” and my brothers name was “John James” and HIS son is named “James John” so I have been confused my whole life:-)

ChrisL

“John” type trivia:
John Baskerville’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all named John. And that’s nothing: his wife (the eventually famous Mrs Eaves) and his father’s first and second wives were all named Sarah...

hhp

Hrant, wouldn’t James trivia have been more appropriate? (Don’t get me wrong, I liked the John trivia.)

James (or anyone else), do you think there are radical changes that could be made to highway signage typefaces now that would blow the minds of the powers that be and thus be rejected at bored level? If so, I’d love to know what they might be. Maybe they are too radical for us? Maybe we’re no more ready for these innovations than the ultra-conservative suits.

When I talked earlier about plateauing, I guess I was suggesting that, with characters/glyphs/whatever, design evolution happens to some extent until a kind of form plateau is reached. Then there maybe a sudden, significant leap, by “accident” (?) rather than a survival of the fittest among the characters that have gone before. Can you have such a leap if it changes the known forms of existing charaters? How does that work?

>can anyone share pictures of unique or flavorful local signage systems they’ve seen?

Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures, but I found the El Paso airport signage really charming and distinctive. It was done in Eagle.

This type is really strong, and has an interesting history. Morris Fuller Benton designed it as all caps for Roosevelt’s National Recovery Association, and David Berlow drew a lower case for it and revived it for Fount Bureau.

At the airport they used both the U & lc, in a heavy weight, bold or black. In spite of the distorted outlines and small counters of the heavy weights, it is quite readable. And, because of the setting on the Mexican border the heavy lettering seemed somehow very Tex-Mex in that setting.

To me this example says a few things about signage.

1. Outside the highway setting, where split seconds matter a lot, many types can work as signage.

2. Aesthetics and branding are often very important and valuable in a signage system.

I think Nick Shinn made both these points in an earlier thread about signage, but the use of Eagle is a striking example, because it is really not what one would think of first for signage, but it works admirably. It is a small airport, so wayfinding is not a huge matter, I must admit.

Nick, if I remember correctly, James has mentioned having thought of proposing something like Syntax (which I myself don’t think is at all “radical”) but being certain of rejection.

hhp

Legibility is directly related to the amount of time I have to get some where. If I were on vacation, I could stare at dumb maps and eventually get where I wanted to go, but If I have a business appointment I better be able to navigate effeciently and on-time. So signage and communications means different things to different people at different times. These days the most important communications should be exit information (London bombings).

Originally, when I was involved in the NPS stuff, Don Meeker and I proposed that the Park Service use Syntax instead of the Clarendon for their highway signature face. We also proposed using it in place of all the Helvetica Bold they were using throughout their wayfinding and publications systems. I even drew a version of Syntax to match the weight and x-height to cap proportion of their Helvetica Bold (so maybe they wouldn’t notice!)

Well after what felt like a 12 hour meeting they rejected Syntax in all its forms because it was too “Quirky”. I beleieve that was the word they used. They just couldn’t get past the splayed M and the angular terminals (and there were designers making these comments). They chose instead Sabon. The Sabon was a non-starter as a highway face, so that began my process of designing the Rawlinson Roadway as a way of satisfying their desire to have an “Oldstyle” type of face for their signature, that would also work well as a highway signage face. Reseach showed that the final version of the design performed 11% or so better than the Clarendon. It also took up less space.

I was going to do a presentation on this process at TypeCon in San Francisco, but my summer got bogged down with other things and I had to put it off.

“I was going to do a presentation on this process at TypeCon in San Francisco...”

Sounds like a wonderful presentation for Boston though? I think I can hear Terry’s chops licking right now :-)

ChrisL

“I think I can hear Terry’s chops licking right now :-)”

Sorry, I’ll turn the microphone off. :)

Did I use the wrong emoticon Terry? Should it should have been :-P

ChrisL

I was just reading chapter 15 in S Loxley’s “Type: the secret
history of letters” (I know, I know) and thought of asking:

James, what do you know/think about Kindersley’s road signage efforts?
Or anybody else as well, really.

hhp

“what do you know/think about Kindersley’s road signage efforts?”

I am definitely not in favor of ever using an all capitals system for wayfinding signage. Incorporating a small caps system might be possible, but I think all caps is not a good idea. To me, all capitals forces the reader to actually recognize each individual character rather than read a full word. I think it lengthens reaction time.

Based on what I’ve read and experimented with, word shapes are important in immediate word recognition. Since we most frequently read mixed case words, it seems most appropriate to use mixed case words on signage.

I think you should look a little forward and capitalize on the fact that many state and local municipalities are looking into CMSs (Changeable Message Signs).

More than likely, if money is to be spent on upgrading road and traffic signage, the bureaucrats will look to the latest accepted studies, and frankly, changing letterforms on static signage is nowhere near the top. Guidelines on the use of Changeable Message Signs and Summary Report have already been drafted and accepted by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. I strongly suggest that if you want to contribute to signage legibility/readability in the very near future, you should begin contacting the manufactures of CMSs.

If you think about it, more than likely these signs will be controlled centrally at transportation centers using computer consoles. I’m sure loading in new type fonts is no more difficult than on the Mac or Pc.

On the subject of Wayfinding systems, I am in contact with many architects in the Boston area. From time to time I notice projects that they have recently completed and some that are “on the boards.”

It is these large architectural firms around the country and world who are getting contracts on projects which have some element of environmental graphics and wayfinding systems. If you really want to see something materialize you should also start contacting architects as well.

I’m in the midst of a conundrum here. A couple months ago, I spent a couple weeks bumming around some of the US’s finer national parks (Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Rocky Mountain) and was really heavily into all the Clarendon signage everywhere. As has been documented elsewhere on Typophile, I’m obsessed with Clarendon, but even still, white on brown Clarendon is both aesthetically appealing to the grown-up type nerd and sentimentally appealing to the grown-up kid who spent a lot of his childhood in national parks.

That said, it’s not terribly easy to read, especially when it’s dim or raining. The Clarendon used by the NPS isn’t blessed with an especially tremendous x-height, and the quirky details that make it so appealing up close can make it hard to read from a distance. My girlfriend and I missed a bunch of turnoffs because we didn’t see the signs we needed in time (although the type was only part of the reason for that, which points to Terry’s larger point that wayfinding is about a lot more than type). By any reasonable yardstick NPS Roadway’s a big improvement. I’m glad they stuck with a serif typeface, as much as I love Syntax and its descendants, because moving to a modern humanist sans would have been a major shock. That said, I’ll be sad to see Clarendon go. In some ways, it is the National Park System to me.

As a side note, it’s fun to see how long it takes to find out where the name “Grand Tetons” originates inside the official park brochures and maps. Talk about burying the lead...

Also, to pick up Norberto’s point, if we’re going to talk about wayfinding in general, not just driving, I think we have to sort of shift gears and talk about screen fonts. More and more of the information needed to get around airports, train stations, and bus stations is only available from computerized displays, and leaving aside horrible interface designs (which abound), most of the time Frutiger or Helvetica would be a huge improvement over what’s actually getting used. Even Arial or Comic Sans would be an improvement (well, OK, given the quality of the displays, maybe not). Airport displays are one of the few environments more hostile to type than the Web, I’d say.

All of the research done surrounding the Clearview and NPS projects points to the superiority of mixed case legends over all uppercase.

Terry, I’m the biggest word-silhouette-matters guy around, so I certainly agree that mixed-case is far superior for “normal” reading. What makes me open to the idea that all-caps might be better for highway signage is the issue of visibility (they’re bigger in the same surface area) versus familiarity (where proper names don’t benefit much). I’m just unsure. It’s interesting that signage has its own particular complexities compared to immersive reading - it’s not as obvious as it might first seem, while the appreciation of immersive reading gets complex fast. But I do have to admit that James is pretty convincing.

hhp

I am pretty sure all of you are familiar with this Euroface link but I thought I would post it for reference anyway:
http://www.peterb.sk/content_items/euroface.html

ChrisL

For reference or comic relief?

Ya gotta love this stuff.... directly from the site....

*International Standard Recognition Unit

Euroface was tested in the laboratory and on a special test road. The team of scientists used for the first time the ‘prof. Morozov legibility test machine’, providing the absolutely objective results employing the previously mentioned ISRU system.

Ha, ha, ha

>For reference or comic relief?

You’ve got to read David Berlow’s comment (see the link from Chris’ referred page) for comic relief. He gravely ’analyses’ the effects of LSD and bullets on sign perception!

Ya got me James :-) The bullett holes make great changeable message medium.

ChrisL

James has gained enormous ground and credibility in demonstrating that yes, a type designer can get you a better, more functional typeface than a bunch of engineers with compasses.

Nick asks if any solutions we might propose could scare away committees of highway planners. I think anything that looks different will scare away these kinds of viewers. James’ experience demonstrates this. It makes sense: Why should they appropriate millions in funds to change something unless there’s a real benefit? The design has to be tested (as has been done with Clearview), and the results showing specific benefits are the real bargaining chip. Beyond that, I think the design has to be superficially conventional in style, something familiar and safe, to satisfy the committee urge to please everyone in the world.

This test is meant to push the possibilites of early recognition and reduce ambiguity as much as possible. In the current context, it would never be shown to a highway commission. Still, I’m intrigued that we might discover something new about what features or qualities improve recognition most, in special cases like highways and subway systems. This design, or something derived from it, could easily be proposed to a local transit agency because the eventual style of it could fit into an identity program. Oddly enough the caps in this sample are not unlike what Kindersley proposed. I discovered this after making the test shapes. It’s about function.

> James has gained enormous ground and ...

Very true. Kudos to him. However, let’s not ignore the fact that the engineers gave us -or least people at large- confidence in the functional merits of the new design.

> The design has to be ...

Also, timing is very important I’d say, especially when any “politics” is involved.

—

Your trial there looks pretty cool I think. Although, as you suspect, it’s hard to imagine government people liking it... But I think with some taming (like less stroke flaring, a more modest “el”, etc.) it might just fly under some people’s radar well enough. The “a” though needs to lose its heavy terminal. But it’s great, work on it some more! It’s clear, from things like the abbreviated bowl of the “g”*, that you know what you’re doing.

* BTW, yhy not a binocular one?

And yes, the Kindersley effect in the caps struck me too!

hhp

The engineers didn’t give us confidence, the reseach results gave the engineers confidence.

The next step in Carl’s design is to test it in situ and see how it measures up.

But the engineers -through their skill and knowledge- produced the research results. And I think the confidence must have extended far beyond just the engineers, otherwise Clearview wouldn’t have become reality.

hhp