Road users find new design clearer than old
In tests, a majority of English speaking road users chose colour-differentiated languages in the test typeface design over Ireland’s existing signs, and over UK-style signs as used in Wales.
The new proposal with the Turas test typeface (font), shown left, is designed to preserve the shape of words, an important factor in word recognition at speed, and to resist the negative effects on signs caused by modern headlights. Each letter shape has been optimised for this purpose.
Research findings - with Irish language speakers
Above: Slides from the screen-based test asking users to choose the clearer sign of two on each slide. Designs that were tested included the colour differentiated design using Turas my experimental road sign typeface, Clearview Hwy the new US design, the undifferentiated sign design used in Wales and the current Irish sign design, which uses uppercase English words beneath an inclined ‘italic’ Irish language typeface.
Comparative testing of designs for clarity
Having researched the issues and developed an initial prototype design solution I constructed a simple test showing comparative examples of existing versus alternative signage solutions. This article deals with the results of the Irish language speaking test group.
Read More...Creating and testing design variants
Finding a research-led design solution for Ireland’s dual-language road signs - a brief design journey.
World Tour
I first created many sketch sign layouts using commonly used typefaces which fitted the criteria of high x-height and suitability for signs. These rough tests were created to explore colour differentiation and compare this with other ways of differentiating the languages including weight difference, uppercase and italics.
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What's wrong with this sign?
These are signs showing the effects of ‘halation’…
Halation is the effect of headlights hitting a highly reflective material used in modern signs. This causes an overglow, which can make the sign difficult to read, this is particularly challenging for older users.
Differentiation of languages in sign design
Bilingual ‘time delay’…
Wales’ bilingual solution takes longer to read than a one-language sign (Rutley 1972). This is not surprising, because increased information on a sign increases comprehension time. And the time is increased further, especially for English-speaking drivers, when Welsh is placed above English.
It does suggest the importance of differentiating our Irish place names from the English. In view of the status of the Irish language, how is a level of differentiation best achieved, whilst preserving ‘equal prominence’? 
Above: Welsh/English sign
Read More...Developments in directional road sign design
In the design of signs, in general, and more particularly road signs, international practise has pointed the way…
A reasonable proposition, in improving Ireland’s sign design, is to address the design of the actual type used. It has long been held by type designers that increased x-height is beneficial to typeface designs for signage. Since the 1960s, design for signage typefaces has concentrated on this and other factors of clarity – all notable new designs address x-height. In Ireland, where we’d be replacing the relatively larger uppercase words in English, use of increases x-height would be particularly applicable.
Above: A classic type, Caslon (left), has it’s x-height (height of the lowercase) compared to Transport (centre) and Clearview Hwy, the recent US road sign type. This illustrates the increased x-height of the Transport design, and how this has been surpassed by the Clearview design.
Read More...The use of English on Ireland's signs
All uppercase versus lowercase – readability and practicality
When upper- and mixed-case words occupied the same sign area Forbes and his colleagues found a significant improvement in reading distance with the mixed-case words.” (Garvey 2006)
Above: Illustrates the advantage of upper and lowercase over all uppercase – in terms of word shapes produced. Both words occupy the same sign area.
Read More...Some background on the evolution of the UK's signs
A little of the history of the UK’s road signs.
Looking at the UK’s National Archive I was struck with the fact that the situation there could have been very different, were it not for the intervention of one or two decisive individuals...
“...it has long been my belief that we would do best to submit all our proposed traffic signs to a consultant industrial artist, who is a expert on lettering. I know it can be argued that, having adopted an alphabet, all the rest is merely routine. I know too that a special relationship has been built up between the Ministry and the sign manufacturers, which introduction of a third party in the form of a consultant would complicate. Nevertheless it is remarkable what a good designer can do to the appearance of simple things, as any attentive reader to the productions of the Council of Industrial Design must know. A decision to appoint a consultant of this kind would not be popular in the Department, but outside it would, I believe, be well received.” (Allen, National Archives, 1957)
It appears, unfortunately, there was no such champion of design in Ireland, but here I’ll outline a few points around the genesis of the UK solution.
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