(Image Source: Flickr)
In the late 1950s and early 60s, British road signs were not doing the job that they were meant to do. At the time, graphic designer Herbert Spencer was so concerned that he drove to Gatwick Airport from central London, noting the road signs he found along the way. He later published two essays containing his findings and photos, and called for a radical overhaul of the way road signs were chosen and displayed.
Jock Kinnear and Margaret Calvert
Jock Kinnear was a celebrated graphic designer, and Margaret Calvert, his junior by almost twenty years, an up and coming illustrator, when the government asked Kinnear to redesign Britain’s road signage. The pair were looking for an efficient and elegant style for the road signs; at the same time, they were also concerned that the signs should be easy to read and understand by road users.
Kinnear, who had been a designer for the Central Office of Information, was recruited to the project in 1957 and requested the help of Margaret Calvert, then a Chelsea student working towards her National Diploma in Design, to help him undertake the project. Originally, she was taken on to help with the drawing and redesign of the signage at Gatwick Airport.
The outcome of the project resulted in a request from the P&O Line to work on the design for a system of labelling baggage. Porters often couldn’t decipher the writing on luggage labels, which resulted in the loss or misallocation of baggage. At the same time the chairman was also the government’s man in charge of road signs, and it was he that requested Kinnear’s help.
The Motorways
At the time, Britain’s roads were not coping well with an increasing amount of traffic, and so there was a massive road building programme, which was when Anderson, the signage chairman, appealed for Kinnear’s help. There was a need for new motorway signs that was more urgent than ordinary road signs, so this was where the work began.
The Anderson Committee
During this time, what became known as the Anderson Committee travelled around Europe to assess their road signage. The committee found that much of this was in a worse state than that in Britain. As a result of this, along with the need for motorway signage, Kinnear and Calvert began work on a system that allowed for clear signs that were easy to read, and as plain or understated as they could be. The designers were aware that simplicity was needed, making it easier for drivers to understand what was required of them.
Kinnear and Calvert both felt that they were not there to design something pretty, but something that was functional and displayed with clarity, while at the same time being cost effective. Old fonts were not clear enough, and so they designed a new, sans serif style font that was eventually called Transport Heavy. The scale of signage had to differ depending on particular road conditions, and the speed at which vehicles might be travelling – this allowed for the difference between ordinary road and motorway signage. Signs were first tested in underground car parks; this proved effective and eventually the clearer, easier to read signs were used on roads across the country.
