We want to make it better

Some signs on some internal hoardings, while some building work is going on in a motorway services station.  "We want to make it better".   On seeing the first sign, it has a chunk missing, which just might seem intentional design.  The the second one has a chunk missing too, this time in a different place.  It's not until you come across the third sign that you realise that they should be intact.  The irony is not lost that the signs about improvement works need some improvement themselves.

Seeing double yellow lines

Double yellow lines are such a familiar sight that we probably register them sub consciously.  That's why three yellow lines is do disconcerting and even disorienting..... Trippe lines gives double vision here.

"HDC" Parking

A sign at a local car park.  "This is H.D.C Pay and Display Car Park".  The H.D.C refers Huntingdonshire District Council in Cambridgeshire, being the local authority. This is a bit of local shorthand.  Fine if you'e a local resident, but if you're a visitor to this market town of a 1000 years, there's no reason you'd know what the HDC might stand for.  "Council" might be a better and more inclusive description.  Otherwise it might be tempting to consider what else the HDC might otherwise stand for...high daily charge, even hairy doored cars.

This Way to No entry

Here's a No Entry sign, from a charming and peaceful little marina on the Nrofolk Broads in Suffolk. It's just that we're more used to seeing the words "no entry" with a graphical no entry sign - the usual red circle with the white horizontal stripe.  And we're used to seeing arrows directing us to go a certain way.  So seeing an arrow that's directing us in a way we should not go is what throws us here. The fact it's red, in capitals and in a different font does strengthen the message.  But at the same time that does distract a bit much perhaps from what would appear to be the primary information and direction sign.

Total Repair - 15 times

A rare indulgent peak into the world of sales marketing.  Each sachet is highlighted with "Total Repair". If it is "total" repair then one cannot help but wonder why they would need to come in packs of 15.

Fix the Faulty Lock

At a London Drama School.  It's a sign on the outside of a loo door..."Faulty Lock.  Make sure it fully clicks. Sorry for the inconvenience".

It's been carefully done.  Polite lower case with a emphasising question mark, clear and efficient use of words, three different font sizes for emphasis.  Then it's been laminated too.  It does make you think that some of that effort might have been best placed in getting the lock fixed rather than slightly glamorising it's faultiness.

It's always slightly amusing to find the use of the word "inconvenience" in the context of a convenience of course.

Any Concerns?

One of those toilet notices demonstrating regular checking.  "These facilities are checked at regular intervals throughout the day. Please notify the Customer Service Desk if you have any concerns"

It's very tempting to take a trip to the Customer Service desk and share "any" concerns. Perhaps the state of the global economy, or the price of a loaf of bread.

These sorts of sings have tended towards referring to regular "checking", rather than regular "cleaning".  Just because there's a promise to check, is not the same as a commitment to clean.

Standby Standby

At a camp site, a 'standby toilet'.  Might be something to stand by, or even for standing at for relief, or even waiting for something else as in 'stand by, stand by'.  Practically of course it's the loo to use when the main ones are closed for cleaning.

Passing Cyclists

This is a sign for cyclists on the back of a low loader lorry..."Beware of passing vehicle on the inside". Depending where the emphasis is in the wording if this sign there can be different meaning. Its the reference to "this" vehicle which is missing...."Beware of passing this vehicle on the inside"

That technically leaves open a different interpretation.  There's a natural desire to fill in the missing words to make this a sentence.  The alternative to "passing this vehicle" is to add "a" to make it "a passing vehicle".

There's a general message here.  Firstly when signs become longer there's a real temptation for them to be read as sentences, and hence the emerging temptation to fill in any missing gaps, which might not necessarily be the right ones or in the right place.  Secondly

This sign also really matters, it's a potential life saver prompt.  Between 1986 and 2011, 439 cyclist were killed in traffic accidents in Grater London.  Over a two week period in November 2013 six cyclists died from from cycling accidents in Greater London.  That brought the total to for the year to 14, of which nine involved heavy goods vehicles.  That also needs to be set in the context of the number of London cycling journeys almost doubling over the preceding 10 years.  That appears to show a general trend over the longer term of reduced casualties per cyclist per kilometer per year. A potential life saver sign no less.

High on Weed

So here's the "High Street" road name sign.  

A weed has rather wonderfully grown just underneath the word 'High'. So with the drug related "weed" and "high" association, here we literally have "High on weed". Fantastic.

Please do not use the sign sign

Here's a sign which rather implies that the sign itself should not be used.  However it's appears to have been improvised to be in front of something else...so using the sign to encourage non-use of something else.

Designated Public Place

A fulsome and official sign. There's lots going on here....multiple colours, font sizes...headlines through to small print, plus some logos.

By default we'll be hooked by the headlines, the biggest and boldest.  So firstly, "YOU ARE IN A DESIGNATED PUBLIC PLACE"....and then the next headline is "MAXIMUM FINE OF £500".  
So on a quick first impression it looks like the message is about being liable to a fine, just by being there.  Serous red with some authoritative blue...that implicit reference to blue and red emergency colours .  And that's all in "shouting" capitals too.

In reality the context is about more specific circumstances - in the middle size print - namely around continuing to drink alcohol when asked not to do so by a police officer.

It's the juxtaposition of soft and general "public place", which by default is anything not private and where most of us find ourselves a lot of the time, with the formal and specific "designation" for around alcohol consumption.

There's also something about the adoption of the generic "designation" here.  Sure it's been designated, but the designation needs some more context specific headline description...It's probably more specifically alcohol management designation.

Welcome IN

The vehicle entrance to a local secondary school, and the "IN" sign.  As one of the first things seen on arriving at the premises, it makes an impression. While the word is "In" but given it's state it's also saying, dirty, scruffy, unloved.   That' all simple word association that subtly going on.  For some it could well be the first impression, for others a re-occurring and reinforcing impression.  It's not an overnight dirty either, it's taken a good time to get into this state.

And if it's the same entrance that staff use you'd think someone might have spotted it's state and triggered some action.  Equally, it's the sort of thing that builds up slowly, and hence can go unnoticed to those who pass it most.

It's another example of the power of signs to influence that first impression, before buildings or people are able to.  So it's not the modern buildings and smart teachers that make that first impression here.  It's also the tone that gets set....what else is dirty, scruffy and unloved.....

Not New High Visibility

So it's quite usual to plentiful signs at building sites and suchlike where the sensible of wearing safety clothing is a must....hard hats, safety shoes and high visibility clothing especially.  In this high vis sign, rather than use 'wear', it's 'worn'.  That can also also mean 'not new' of course, which can rather convey the message that the high vis clothing must not be "new" high vis clothing.

While we might be used to hearing the abbreviation of "visibility" to "vis", it's also usual in the written form to abbreviate the "High" to "Hi".  In the first abbreviation it's a shorter written and different sounding solution, without a strong different meaning.  Technically though Vis is a small Croatian island in the Adriatic sea, with a town of the same name and a population of around 3500, and it's the Vatican's press office - the Vatican Information Service.   At any rate "vis" does have some other very specific meanings, but not common place enough to matter here.

On the other hand, abbreviating "High" to "Hi", is different, perhaps one of the most common words of greeting in the western world.  The immediate distraction to think "hello" is mostly avoided here through the visual clue of the clothing and the association with "vis". In some cases the "High Visibility" is strangely abbreviated to "Hi Viability", and that starts to feel like a typo.

Seat Smoking

A retro fit window sticker in a vintage 1966 double decker bus.  Original notices of that era tended to be on plaques or printed directly on surfaces.  While the sticker is a more modern method it's still quit old as the vintage hint is still there, with the reference to "in the seats", a particular turn of phrase.  

There's some tempting literal interpretation possible here too.  "Seats" here is about the seating area, so no smoking in the seating area please.  Rather that to mean the inside the fabric or construction of any of the individual seats which is then described in the plural....those seats would not have been of modern fire retardant standard......

Looks like there's been some attempts to remove it, a possible recent recognition of it's rather surplus status with a modern accepted default of no smoking in inside public spaces.

Go to the bar

There's a rather fantastic collection of home made slot machines to be found on the pier at Southwold in Suffolk.

Given their uniqueness and their acknowledged temperamental nature, there's a sign to use the intercom for assistance.  That's supplemented by a delightful postscript..."If no reply go to the bar".

That could of course mean that at the bar you shall find pier staff to assist you.  Equally it's somewhere just to go for a drink to cope with the any disappointment or frustration.  Or even if there's no-one on the intercom, it's because they've themselves gone to the bar. I suspect that the interpretive licence is intended here. Love it.

Red Tick

There's some thing a little perplexing about this sign from a hospital toilet area.  It's one of those issues hidden in plain sight.  It's because the tick and it's colour are at odds with each other.  We're more used to seeing green ticks and red crosses, so the red tick is what throws us, but without at first realising why.  Sometimes that juxtaposition can be an intentional thing to encourage or force that thinking and to hold the attention that bit longer to make a connection.

Caring Tree

A quirky handmade sign discouraging littering...."Think before you throw your litter down, you may not care but I do".  

Technically just encouraging the 'thinking' about it though, before explicitly describing the action that it is in fact discouraging (arguably 'shouting' in capitals') 'throw' your litter down'.  That "throw" is a strong and active description, even angry, rather then a description of perhaps typically more nonchalant dis-guarding of litter.

The alternative is to encourage the desirable action.   With the 'You may not care but I do - Please use a litter bin'.  Or to reflect the request to think..."Please consider using a litter bin."  

The original prose curiously opens up the question about whether the message had been left on behalf of the tree so giving it a voice, or possibly that the author is looking on. 

On Parking

A charming home made "No Parking Private" sign.  It shows come real care in the painted letters....perhaps based on a stencil and then care in some sharp lines.  It's the bigger picture where the overall effect is not so sharp.... That stencil seems to have been the wrong way around for the N in No, and hence creation of a new letter form, the mirror image of a capital N.  The spacing then stands out too...Private is keenly biased to the left.  There's a also a little hint on the slightly slanting G of parking, titled just enough to squeeze it into the remaining white space before the border.

Twenty's Plenty

So "Twenty's Plenty Where people live". A very short and catchy sign given it's rhyme, encouraging slower speeds in residential streets. All part of a national campaign 20's Plenty for us. 

There's various formats and sizes which give it a more personal feel too.

Destination Fare

A wonderful original sign on a 1966 vintage double decker bus.  "Please Tender Exact Fare and State Destination". If the fare varies by distance then surely it makes more sense to state the destination first, from which it's possible to calculate the fare....

Swim-mi-ming Pool

From the entrance to the local 'Swim-mi-ing pool'.  The word swimming has an extra 'mi' in the middle for good messure. 

It's quite a good example of how we naturally speed read prose rather than actually read it.  It's a less usual and relatively long word which makes it easier to and more natural for a confident speed read.

One step

A great solution to encouraging the right pedestrian traffic flows in busy public places.  This from Sheffield Train Station.  So there's dedicated stairs to go up and dedicated stairs to come down.  To help reinforce the overhead signage there's "no entry" symbols on the steps (with equivalent arrows on the neighbouring ones).

Sure in crowds these might not be visible, but those crowds would start with light pedestrian flow. Something about "a stitch in time". There's also something here about the fact we tend to be careful and observe where we step if mostly with our peripheral vision, and this seems to play to that.

Flummoxed Floors

A lift at the University of Sheffield.  Rather than numbering the floors, here they are lettered.  To be fair part if the problem is caused by the building being on a hill with ground level being one floor different front and back of the building, but is's a poor solution.

Letters can work as 'ordinal scale' in that there is an known order.  But numbers often work better as labels as their order seems to be more intuitively natural.  That's because numbers are and 'interval scale' where the difference between the numbers (the 'interval) has some meaning....the fifth floor is three floors up from floor two.  Rather than floor K being three floors up from floor B.  We can more easily add or subtract with numbers that we can with letters in the alphabet.

Try 'counting' backwards through the alphabet.  What's the letter two before I? Compared to...  what's the mumber which is two before 5? In the former it often needs to be worked out from the original alphabetic order starting from a,b etc, while in the numbers example there's no need to start with zero.

To compound matters, not only are the floors vertically differentiated but the labeling also runs horizontally too.  So you have to read up and down and left and right.  With numbers that works a bit easier, for example double figures are more easily differentiated from single figures.  With letters maybe they could be "zones" rather than floors...rather like the Rohald Dahl's 'great glass elevator' in Charlie and the Chocolate factory where the lift goes left and right as well as up and down.

To compound matters, the use of letters has also required some post installation signage to make sense of it all.   A sign to identify the ground floor, which would more usually be 'G' or '0',   In this case the floor labelled 'G' is in fact the first floor.

No Cycling or No Cycles

Here's some very sensible precautions around a facilities block at a cap site... "No cycling, skateboards or scooters".

A mixed use if verbs and nouns here. No cycling but not explicitly no cycles.  So you could legitimately push your bike.  By contrast it's no skateboards or scooters, rather than no skateboarding or scooting, which technically implies no pushing scooters or carrying skateboards.

It's probably down to a natural reluctance not to use the more clumsy and less common "skateboarding" and "scooting".

Not Withstanding

A visiting miniature ride on railway.  A mini steam engine with a few mini carriages to sit on.

Here's the safety message... "Do not stand up, no leaning".  It's mixed dynamics here..'Do Not Stand' rather than "No Standing", and equally "No Leaning" rather than "Do Not Lean".

A shorter and more consistent message could have read "No Standing or Leaning", or "Do Not Stand or Lean".    There's probably an emphasis here though on the process of standing up....it's that rapid movement of the centre of gravity, and especially while the train is in motion.  Probably less severe or volatile impact with just leaning.

And technically you'd be standing, both before sitting down for the journey and then afterwards to get off.....

Landfill Leverage

Some powerful signage for would ordinarily be a litter or rubbish bin, which would of course typically be signed as litter or rubbish.  This one takes it a step further making the longer term destination for it's contents very explicit - landfill - even emotionally loaded.

Penny Spending Puzzle

Here's one of three cubicles in the toilets of flagship clothing chain.  For two of the cubicles the doors open inwards which is usual..  For this third cubicle the door opens outwards.    Trouble is that the sign is right at the top of the door, eye level for someone nearly 7ft tall.  If you do manage to spot the sign, the next challenge is that there's no handle to pull.  Hence the only solution is to reach up and pull the door towards you.

Perplexed pedestrian

This is the pedestrian approach from the disabled parking at the local hospital.   So once parked there's direct and a dedicated footpath to the hospital entrance. Super.  But as you approach the entrance there's a sign for drivers right in the middle of the path. And with a restriction on the other side too, the gap is far from being sufficient for a wheelchair.  So it's into the road and up the kerb.  No excuses here.

Inconvenienced Inconveniences

Here's an apology for the inconvenience of the the conveniences being inconvenienced....

Magic Transport Seating

At the local hospital, the "patient transport seating area".  Would be lovely to think that this is magical seating that transports you in a Harry Potter sort of way...the Patient 'Transport Seating' Area. Maybe arrive by the magical red seating and leave by the black.  However more likely to be 'Patient Transport' Seating Area.

There's also a ledge too, and the sign is closer to that.  So it might even be two tier seating for when it really busy.

Arrow Art

So how far does a sign have to go before it becomes art.  Here's a direction arrow at Kings Cross train station in London, which is a sign, an arrow and art all at the same time.  There's even a sign about not climbing on these signs.

No Smoking Shepherds

Just off one of London's major central roads between mainline train stations...this wonderful no smoking sign on some hoardings for building works.  Fascinating that one seems to apply only to Shepherds.  Perhaps some shepherds do have the Freedom of the City and hence to drive a herd of sheep across town. Much more mundane than that...simply the name of the contractor.  Probably policy that all signs need the company name, whatever the context.

Recyclewing Bin

Here's a commercial recycling bin.  But actually it's a Recyclewing Bin, and almost a tongue-twister.  At first glance it looks a great typo or even maybe as extreme as being spelt as per a local dialect.  Closer inspection reveals it's from a company called Glazewing.  So it's actually a great play on words.

Royal Rave Restriction

No ordinary sign this one, a serious legalistic one which has it's own little roof.  Not surprisingly really, it on Royal premises.  Looking a little closer, that person graphic does rather look like that state in between walking and "night fever" style dancing, and once seen not that easy to unsee.  So just maybe the site is protected from dancing, and trespass is just a way to design it out.

Keep Door Locked Shut

Keep locked shut.  Another example of the door that cannot logically be used if you follow the instruction.  If its kept locked shut then the door cannot be opened. A door that is kept locked shut is really just a wall.

Fifty Percent off Christmas

So it's "50% off Christmas" at the local gift shop.  That of course is really just shorthand for 50% off Christmas merchandise.  Alternately it could well mean that Christmas day has been reduced by 50% to only 12 hours, with half a turkey. 

Apologetic Door

Here's a sign on a door between inside and outside at a local garden centre.

It's a single door in a bank of windows.  While it's pleasing to be invited to use the door, assuming that there's a need or desire, it's curious why this would be a cause to apologise.

Nature No Entry

A walk through some Buxton woods reveals this wonderful no-entry gate, but missing it's neighbouring fencing.  This is the more relaxed countryside guidance.... and the point is made simply enough.  It's empowering a sense of trust which is simultaneously encouraging a natural curiosity.

This Way Up Down and Sideways

Here's a box for the transport of flowers.... David Austin Roses no less.

There's a great bright sticker specifically to highlight the fragility and to keep upright.  So wonderful that such a clearly purposeful sticker has been used in such a way as to be at odds with itself.  What's even more curious is that the sticker does not explicitly say to keep the box upright, rather to keep box as the angle of the arrows.  That might just raise the question about whether the box should be balanced on it's corner, a bit like balancing a pyramid on it's point.