Too fragile to touch

In National Trust and English Heritage properties, it's usual to see quite polite notices to dissuade some activities.   Even simply suggestive rather than specific signage....so for example the bunched lavender sprigs place on antique chairs to discourage sitting down.  Then there were these "Too fragile to touch" signs.  The polite way to discourage handling, and with a clear purpose too.

Now this next "Too fragile to touch" notice seems to have been touched so much, that it might also have become too fragile to touch itself....And as if that was not itself curious, it even looks in worse condition than that to which it relates....

Please be Seated

Why use one sign when 10 will do.

Here's a waiting area at the local hospital, specifically the waiting area for Assessment in the Accident and Emergency Department.

"Assessment Waiting Area.  Please take a seat further back in the waiting room once you have seen the assessment nurse"

A nicely defined area here where a couple of wall signs might have done the job.  However here every seat gets it's very on sign.

What's curious is that when all the seats are occupied none of the signs can be seen of course....

Beware the.....

Caution....Barber Ware? 

Maybe we need a Caution Stinging Nettles Sign as you approach to read the obscured Caution Barbed Wire Sign.

Office - Caution Compressed Air

Here a couple of neighbouring signs on a door in the local hospital.

"Office"
"Caution Compressed Air"

It's the neighbouring nature of these signs which do rather hint at an association....

Best Worst Sandwich

So this sandwich is  "The best sandwich I've ever had" A quote from somebody called John Thorpe.  

Maybe giving this some personal reference gives it some convincing credibility.  Just because it's been said does not make it true.  Even if we assume John is sure and true, the credibility of the quote depends rather more on how many sandwiches our dear friend John has had.

Of course if this was the first sandwich that John ever had - it would still be the best - but it would also be the worst of course...

Blue Badge Beration Behaviour

Here's a parking notice for blue badge holders at a local authority car park.

Blue badge holders also have a blue card clock that sometimes needs to be displayed alongside the blue badge where blue bad parking has some time limit.  Simple enough... set the cardboard hands on the cardboard clock to the parking arrival time.

This sign goes a step further.  Rather than simply - as would be usual - ask for the clock to be displayed, ...here there's a rather different exacting tone here....that they "must be displayed correctly".  That's all rather implicit in their use, and explicit in the instructions that come with the Blue badge.

Disguised Directions

Here's a road sign...

It's a T-Junction, approaching from the trunk of the T.  So the left and right direction arrows are meant for us.

However the support for the other signs obscures our sign.

It's always amazing that with the degree of concentration that desired and needed on the roads, and especially so at junctions, that extra barriers like this are created.

Water Cooler Confusion

Here's a water cooler dispenser.

Two outputs for water - left and right.  One for cooler water than than the other.

Two buttons to press - top and bottom.

The assumptive link here is that we tend to work left to right and top to bottom, so logically the top button produces water from the left side.  But we do need to explicitly think about this and check ourselves.  Maybe that's why there's a wet floor as people do get it wrong, and enter health and safety considerations and hence the sign.  Water's no only a precious resource but costs money too, so no real excuse to be less than really clear. Wonder how many people get cold when they want regular and then vise vera and end up wasting.

Why not just put the buttons side by side, even some labels might help.

Left Right Litter

So litter bins. And two of them too.  But there's a difference....One had a white backed litter sign and one has a red backed litter sign.  So what does that mean for litter.  We're all becoming increasingly familiar with the need to separate recycling from our rubbish and even separating out our recycling into different sorts.  But separating out litter into different sorts.

And red too makes us stop and think - as it's a serious warning colour... Red traffic lights (and even red blood) which makes us think even harder about if and what is the difference in purpose of these two bins.

An then....with the red theme....is that red signed bin anything to do with the red-banded bin to the side?

Push the floor

What do you do when you find a sign on the floor that says push.  Well this one seems to have fallen from a a double door.  The reason a push sign was necessary in the first place as a retro fit, was that those double doors had grab handles that positively encouraged pulling....

Strictly No Exit

As if the words "No Exit" were not clear and explicit enough, here it's "Strictly" no exit.  That does rather imply that a "No Exit" sign really just means "It's OK to exit sometimes".

Sit down and put your feet up?

From a train.  This two pairs of seats opposite each other with the table in between....

The picture of the sign might seem to be encouraging the whole...sit down and put your feet up...while the words of course are discouraging that.  Culturally we probably get this "no feet on seats thing" anyway.  

It's often more typical to show the action that is being discouraged and put it in it's own frame and put a line through it....no smoking for example....cigarette in a red circle with a thick red line across.

Nice that's it's positive language with a request to do do something...."keep feet of seats" rather than the more negative "Please do not put feet on the seats".  More naturally to think the positive action than the negative action and reverse it....

Emergency Exit Exclusion

Here's some sign jumble at the local hospital.  This is coded the entry/exit for ambulance crew to directly access the Accident and Emergency Department.

So the "Ambulance Staff Only" sign is properly obscured by the emergency exit sign.  It might just raise the question if it's the emergency exit for Ambulance staff only....And with Red signage, that seriously instructive colour of red traffic lights.

An then there's the ordering of the signs.  So first it's emergency exit, and then it's Ambulance staff only....and signs or instructions then to follow on logically from the previous ones....so emergency exit but exclusively for ambulance staff.

In reality the emergency exit sign will do it's job in all probability.....Can't help but wonder if that lack of clarity in managing the messaging - especially important ones like emergency exit -  inspires enough confidence when it comes to actually managing an emergency.....

Norovirus Notice

Here's a printed page stuck to the entrance doors of the local hospital.

The sign is rather scruffy and it's dated nearly a year ago.  So how much credence will it get?

Wonder how much is the credibility reduced by it's slightly dog eared nature and it's rather historical date stamp.  Does this relate to last winter, that's been and gone, as has the subsequent spring and summer....

Given these viruses can have serious health consequences, and this is the main communication with visitors on the matter, whether this needs to have more presentation and temporal credibility....

Trained Person Only

Some standard 13Amp sockets... The same as that used in homes by adults, even children, up and down the county day after day, but this one is to be used by a "Trained Person Only".....

Royal Reservation

On a winter visit to the Queen's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk we called in to the visitor centre for a family Sunday lunch.

Much to our amusement the neighbouring table had been reserved for King. In our waterproofs and wellies we suddenly felt a tad under dressed.....

Bangers and Mash Up

Here’s the poster from my local Sainsburys.

It's what I shall call a “calco”, a mis-calculation, the numerical equivalent of “typo.”

Now £3.79. Was £4.29. Save 70p.

Actually that should be save 50p.

Or should it? All we can tell is that these numbers are not consistent with each other, and so any one could be wrong. Interestingly there’s no way of knowing on the face of it which of the numbers is wrong…might just need to buy some sausages and mash to find out.

But all is not lost. If we want to assume that only one of the three numbers is wrong, then by means of mathematical deduction, we can go as far to say that we would save 50p or 70p.

The fact that this error found its way on to the shop floor of a national chain is no mean feat. The poster will have been through some design, create, print, and probably approval process. Then distributed to stores and then shop floor and no one noticed this simplest of errors. Especially when you consider that the primary objective of the poster would appear to be to make a specifically numerical point.

Also makes me think that perhaps we need a “maths-checker”, the numerical equivalent to a spell checker. It would identify the numbers in prose and check for some sort of mathematical relationship.

Library Liability

Since 1997 the British Library has been based at these premises, next to St. Pancras Station in London.  Holding over 150 million items held for posterity and research, and with a full programme of exhibitions, the design of the building courted significant controversy - it's really polarises opinion.  I should know I worked there....

That design has bring unique foibles necessitating some unique signage.   Here are the steps leading up to the front entrance.  It's been necessary have a sign for each of the steps.  Given the regular exhibitions here, this might just qualify as an installation.....

Please Please Be Good

Please please be good, you know that you should.  So many signs are implicitly negative rather than positive.  That’s often due to the desire to discourage specific activity.  It can be more positive and  engaging to instead encourage the desired activity.   So please be good rather than don’t be bad.

A lovely example here of a positive request basically “Please keep on the paths”,  rather than the so much more common negative request to “Please keep off the grass”.

That has a deeper impact than we might first think.  We have inbuilt trouble with thinking the reverse.   A good example is "do not think of a blue duck".  You can't help but envisage the duck.  By the same logic negative instructions start the thinking about the negative situation rather than the positive.

Welcome

Welcome

This is a home for all those wonderfully odd  instructional, guidance and informational signs that we see about....especially where they are curious or confusing.

I remain amazed at how many of these signs that I've come across, often not fully fit for purpose in some way which creates the opportunity for unnecessary confusion.  That simply makes people think more than they need to, and especially when that thinking is an extra barrier of time and effort to some call to action.

Some make us smile, even laugh, and other can be downright curious and odd, and sometimes even a tad annoying or frustrating.  It's also great to find good ones, so there's some of those too.

So....Sign + Sense + Ability.... something about the ability to make signs make most sense.....

Enjoy.

Paul

Paul Askew

paul.askew@signsenseability.org.uk

Press and Hold

From one of these lifts designed to take a wheelchair, and an addition to the original building.  

To keep the lift moving - either up or down - a button needs to be kept pressed down.  But which one?