Why are road signs so hard to read?
Phil Patton, who writes on things design-related for the New York Times, did an interesting story about why it is that street and highway signs seem to have been designed by a guy in a studio sitting quietly sipping coffee, not even beginning to consider the fact that the person who most needs to be able to read his handiwork is tired, anxious, driving at night, lost and going 65 miles an hour on a crowded interstate. It’s the typeface, dummy. A team of researchers has now created a new typeface called ClearView to try and change things for us hapless tourists of the tarmac. Did you like that? Up top this post are James Montalbano (left) and Donald Meeker, the leaders of the ClearView design team, with their handiwork and the old typeface. Can you tell which is which? (The answer’s at the end of this post – you knew I was a tease, but I’m not mean…) Here’s the January 21 Times story about the effort to make things more legible for road warriors. Road Signs of the Times If drivers on
