Today I want to celebrate the famous designs of Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir, the products they have developed are world renowned and I would say are the best of their kind. Often overlooked, I want to discuss the great design of UK road signage, why I love it and why the design is spot on.
So, in 1958 the government were looking for some designers to re-do their road signs and update them for the modern road system. Having just finished creating a sign system for Gatwick airport Jock Kinneir's design firm was hired for the job. At this time the automotive industry was growing. With cars becoming cheaper, more cars on the road meant more possible accidents and at this time there was little or no road signs to help drivers on their travels in the UK. Motorway construction also began at this time so with drivers travelling faster than ever before they would need signs that were very easy to digest.
An example of an old British road sign
So Calvert and Kinneir had a big challenge ahead of them in creating pretty much an entire visual language from scratch. There were two questions they first had to answer, what information do you need to know when travelling at speed and from what distance should you be able to read it from. Research they undertook to answer these two questions then determined what the sign size and shape would be, font shape and size, and many other aspects of the signs.
Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir
Let's talk about the fonts first, for these new signs Margaret and Jock designed two new fonts. 'Transport' and 'Motorway' are instantly recognisable for anyone who has grown up in the UK and are probably the first fonts I picture in my head when I think of factual and concise topics. The letters were designed in such a way to be as easily legible as possible. The letter spacing was specifically tested and designed according to the results which suggested bigger letter spacing allowed for quicker understanding when reading. This standard has been recognised and followed by many other countries since. All of the letters were designed so that there was no doubt if one letter could be another when reading challenging conditions. The signs mix upper and lower case as research they conducted found that it was easier to read than all upper case. Again, to make the signs digestible without really having to actively think, allowing drivers to maintain focus on the road.
Then on to the shapes of signs, there are three basic shapes that are used - circles, rectangles and triangles. Each sign has its own function, circles give orders, rectangles give information and triangles are used for warnings. What is so great about this is that immediately when we see a sign while driving you react instinctively before you even read the sign. By looking at these signs over and over your brain quickly learns that if you see a triangle to be more cautious and if you see a circle to check you are obeying the rules of the road - without even thinking you do it!
Though they both contributed to every part of the design of the system, Margaret Calvert's most famous contribution to the signs are the pictograms we see when driving to warns us of things like roadworks, livestock crossing, possible landslides and most famously children crossing. Her sign for children crossing the road was very special for the time, depicting a girl leading a boy. Of course at the time the male dominated design industry would have put the boy leading the girl but the girl leads in Calvert's sign which is a great message to convey. The style of the pictograms is perfect as they show objects and people clearly without doubt of what it could mean.
Every feature of UK road signs were carefully designed so that they could be subconsciously interpreted for maximum awareness and safety while driving. Though road systems in the UK can be sometimes confusing with mega roundabouts and confusing lanes, you can imagine what kind of carnage it would be without these signs!
What I particularly love about the design process of these signs was that it was very research orientated originally, Calvert and Kinneir made the world's best sign system because they did the most research - as well has having great talent. What speaks to how good these signs are is that they have been relatively unchanged in Britain since they were instated in 1965 and have been copied by worldwide by other countries who want to make their roads safer. The designs have impacted millions of people in the world and had a huge impact saving many lives I'm sure. The designs are some of the greatest in history and are unique because what makes them great is that you don't ever really think about them.
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