British Road Sign Project (DM)

British Road Sign Project

Visual celebration of the work of Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert.

Project by Patrick Murphy

Publication produced to support the exhibition at Humber Street Gallery

Foreword

In 1965 one of the most ambitious and effective information design projects was launched in Britain. The British Road Sign appeared on our streets for the very first time over 50 years ago and has occupied an important role in our lives ever since, from instructing us where to go and a safe speed to travel at, to making us aware of any hazards or road works. The signs designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert standardised the road network, creating many of the signs we see today and produced two new typefaces: Transport and Motorway.

The signage system was launched in 1965 and to mark this 50th anniversary leading artists and designers were invited to transform the familiar circle, triangle and square signs.

The new collaborative signs evolve from the original signs function of instructing people of speed limits and directions to poetically disrupting our everyday with designs that makes us stop, look and think about design and our environment in a slightly different way; less instructions and more pauses for thought.

The project is curated by Patrick Murphy, of MADE NORTH. An installation of signs took place at the Design Museum during London Design Festival 2015.

Images show the installation of anniversary signs at the Design Musuem

Images : Will Ireland - Computer Arts Magazine

Background

One of the most ambitious and effective information design projects ever executed in Britain is the road and motorway signage system designed by JOCK KINNEIR (1917-1994) and MARGARET CALVERT (1936-) from 1957 to 1967. Intellectually rigorous yet inclusive and engaging, their system has become a role model for modern road signage all over the world.

Determined to illustrate the haphazard state of British road signage at the turn of the 1960s, the graphic designer Herbert Spencer drove from central London to the recently opened Heathrow London Airport and photographed each of the road signs that he came across along the way.

He then published the result in two photographic essays in successive 1961 issues of his graphic design magazine Typographica.

Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert

At the time, Britain’s roads were littered with a plethora of signs commissioned by various bodies. In the course of Spencer’s journey, mostly along the A3, he photographed scores of signs each bearing different symbols, colours and typefaces. His essays prove how chaotic and confusing British road signs must have seemed to motorists at the time. They also demonstrate why the need for a coherent and easily legible signage system was so urgent.

The government of the day took the unusual step of entrusting the development of the new system to the graphic designer Jock Kinneir (1917-1994) and his assistant Margaret Calvert. They devised a rigorous signage system of carefully coordinated lettering, colours, shapes and symbols for Britain’s new motorways in the late 1950s and for all other roads in the early 1960s. Efficient and elegant, their system was one of the most ambitious information design projects ever undertaken in Britain.

When he started work on the signage for Britain’s first motorways in 1957, Jock Kinneir was already regarded as one of Britain’s most accomplished graphic designers. Born in Hampshire in 1917, he studied engraving at Chelsea School of Art from 1935 to 1939 and, after World War II ended, was employed as an exhibition designer by the Central Office of Information. He then worked for the Design Research Unit, the multidisciplinary design group founded by the historian Herbert Read, before opening his own practice in 1956 and teaching part-time at Chelsea. Kinneir won his first big commission to design the signage for Gatwick, the new London airport, after meeting one of its architects Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall in a bus queue. He asked one of his students at Chelsea, Margaret Calvert, to assist him with the project.

Born in South Africa in 1936, Calvert had moved to England as a teenager and specialised in illustration when studying for her National Diploma in Design at Chelsea. Kinneir employed her to help produce the artwork, maquettes and drawings for Gatwick. “A job like Gatwick meant something then”, she later told the design historian Rick Poynor. “It was really pioneering. You really believed in it and wanted to be part of it – not in the sense of glory. It was just simply thrilling to be building.”

When Colin Anderson, the chairman of the P&O-Orient Line shipping company read about the Gatwick signage in a magazine, he commissioned Jock Kinneir to design a baggage labelling system for P&O. Passengers often lost their luggage because porters could not decipher the old labels. In 1957 Anderson was then appointed chairman of the government committee formed to review the signing needed for British motorways and asked Kinneir to design them.

Transport original artwork, lowercase letters, tiling system 1957–64

David Kindersley’s capital only alphabet, 1959

The government was planning to build hundreds of miles of high-speed motorways as part of an ambitious road construction programme. The existing roads could not cope with the millions of new British motorists who had started to drive in the 1950s as cars, such as the Morris Minor and Mini, became less expensive and more efficient. The plethora of different road signs was at best confusing and at worst dangerous to Britain’s motorists, and threatened to be particularly so when driving at high speed on a motorway. As the need for motorway signage was so urgent, the government decided to tackle it first before modernising other road signs.

The members of the Anderson Committee travelled around Europe to assess how different countries were addressing the problem. Mostly, they found illegible signs designed in capital letters as an after-thought by the engineers appointed to construct the roads. By approaching the problem from an information design perspective, Kinneir and Calvert set about developing a coherent system which would be as easy to read – and understand – as possible. Kinneir said that he started with the question: “What do I want to know, trying to read a sign at speed” “Style never came into it,” recalled Calvert. “You were driving towards the absolute essence. How could we reduce the appearance to make the maximum sense and minimum cost”.

Their system was rooted in the concept of many signs taking the form of a map of the junction ahead. Concluding that a combination of upper and lower case letters would be more legible than conventional upper case lettering, they developed a new typeface, a refinement of Aksidenz Grotesk, for use in the signs. Later named Transport, it is recognisably modern as a sans serif font, but it is softer and curvier than the blunt modernist lettering used on continental European road signs. Kinneir and Calvert felt that these qualities would make it seem friendlier and more appealing to British drivers.

They tested the signs in an underground car park and mews on the Knightsbridge side of Hyde Park and then in the park itself, where the signs were propped up against trees to determine suitable background colours and reading distances. The first public appearance of the new signs took place in 1958 on the first motorway-standard road – the Preston by-pass in Lancashire (now part of the M6) – and the system was approved. Despite the complaints of a handful of conservative commentators that the signs were too big and abrasive, they were deemed a success. These were soon imitated on some unofficial black background direction signs on roads in Oxfordshire, attracting censure from the Ministry.

Legibility test carried out by the Road Research Laboratory at Benton Airport in 1959.

Jock Kinneir overseeing the production of road signs.

In 1961 T. G. Usborne, the Ministry of Transport official in charge of the Anderson Committee, formed a committee to review signage on all other roads. Sir Walter Worboys was recruited to chair it, Anderson having declined the offer to reprise his role. Jock Kinneir was commissioned as the designer. In 1964 he made Margaret Calvert a partner and renamed his practice Kinneir Calvert Associates.

Adopting the same rigorous approach to the organisation of information for road signs as for motorways, they compiled codes of carefully chosen shapes and colours. The codes conformed to the 1949 Geneva Protocol of using triangular signs to warn drivers, circles to issue commands, and rectangles to relay information. Just as their motorway signs consisted of white lettering against a blue background, they used white lettering for place names and yellow for road numbers against a green background on signage for primary roads, and black lettering against a white background for secondary routes.

A major innovation of the motorway signs was the use of a new material for the white lettering. This allowed them to be easily read at night by reflecting light from vehicle headlamps back in the direction it came from. The lettering thus contrasted well with the blue background, which being non-reflective appeared black at night, and could be read from a considerable distance. The medium weight font used was ideal for this as the reflected light tended to halo, making the text appear slightly bolder.

But the white background of signs on roads of lower importance had the opposite effect and tended to spill over into the black letter forms. For these a bolder font was needed and Transport Heavy was born.

Transport Medium (as it came to be known) was also refined and adapted slightly from the motorway version. The characters of both weights were given notional tile outlines to facilitate to their correct spacing. Whilst these outlines were equivalent to the body of traditional letterpress type, alternative tile widths were prescribed for particular combinations of letters, what we would today call kerning, to improve appearance and readability.

Maquettes: Courtesy of St Bride Library

It is not always appreciated that the size of lettering used on traffic signs varies greatly depending upon the speed of traffic and how much information is shown. Other elements of the sign need to be scaled accordingly, and Kinneir and Calvert deserve as much credit for their system of spacing and layout that retains this proportionality as for the fonts themselves. They based their design rules upon the width of the stroke of the capital I in the Transport Medium font – a measure that would scale with the size of lettering. Thus the width of the sign border was specified as 1½ stroke widths, the route arm widths on map-type signs as 2½, 4 or 6 stroke widths (depending upon their status), and the gap between two unrelated blocks of text as 12 stroke widths Further experiments were undertaken: trial installations in the Stamford and Biggleswade areas, and tests at Benson Airfield in Oxfordshire involved signs mounted on cars driven towards static observers, to simulate the need to understand signs whilst on the move and to determine reading distances for different options.

The Committee decided to adopt the continental style of using pictograms rather than words on the road signs, and Calvert drew most of the pictograms in the friendly, curvaceous style of Transport. Many of her illustrations were inspired by aspects of her own life. The cow featured in the triangular sign warning drivers to watch out for farm animals on the road was based on Patience, a cow on her relatives’ Warwickshire farm.

Eager to make the school children crossing sign more accessible, she replaced the image of a boy in a school cap leading a little girl, with one of a girl – modelled on a photograph of herself as a child – with a younger boy. Calvert described the old sign as being: “quite archaic, almost like an illustration from Enid Blyton… I wanted to make it more inclusive because comprehensives were starting up.

British Road Sign In 1965, one of the most ambitious and effective signing systems was launched in Britain. The new system, relating to Continental protocol, included a set of pictograms and a new letterform named Transport, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. Despite minor modifications, the system still remains in place today.

Road works

Kinneir and Calvert continued to propose refinements to their work. In late 1963 a revised version of Transport was produced, with the lowercase letters enlarged relative to the capitals. Tests by the Road Research Laboratory showed the improvement in readability to be marginal, so this adaptation was dropped.

Margaret drew the pictograms in the friendly, curvaceous style found in the Transport typeface.

Many of her illustrations were inspired by aspects of her own life.

The cow featured in the triangular sign was based on Patience, a cow on her relatives’ Warwickshire farm.

Eager to make the school children crossing sign more accessible, she replaced the image of a boy in a school cap leading a little girl, with one of a girl – modelled on a photograph of herself as a child – with a younger boy.

50th Anniversary of the British Road Sign. Proin pharetra nibh sit amet rhoncus ornare. Maecenas quis eros nec dui sagittis scelerisque. Nam faucibus semper sollicitudin. Fusce convallis non orci eget blandit. In eget orci non est mattis finibus vel non lorem. Etiam sit amet mauris sed dolor feugiat vehicula.

Vestibulum bibendum ipsum non turpis ultricies tempus. Sed luctus vulputate augue, eu egestas sem malesuada ac. Quisque semper, lorem at ultricies interdum, metus turpis tincidunt eros, quis semper ex elit a nisi. Praesent nibh metus, ultricies non lectus quis, auctor rutrum risus. Integer sollicitudin ligula in lacus tincidunt pulvinar.

We asked Margaret to choose five signs to celebrate the 50th anniversary. The five on this page represent the ones chosen, they are also available as signed limited edition print.

Margaret Calvert. 2015

The road signs proved as efficient and popular as their motorway signage and elements of their design have been used in countless other countries.

Kinneir and Calvert went on to complete other public sector design projects. The Rail Alphabet typeface they designed for British Rail was part of the ambitious 1964 identity programme that included cutlery by the metalware designer David Mellor and the rail symbol created by Gerald Barney of the Design Research Unit. They also worked for hospitals and the army, and designed signage for airports in Melbourne, Sydney and Bahrain, as well as for the Tyne & Weir Metro. Both Kinneir and Calvert taught at the Royal College of Art, where each had a stint as head of the graphic design department.

50th Anniversary of the British Road Sign. In 1965 one of the most ambitious and effective information design projects was launched in Britain. The British Road Sign appeared on our streets for the very first time 50 years ago and has occupied an important role in our lives ever since, from instructing us where to go and a safe speed to travel, to making us aware of any hazards or road works. The signs designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert standardised the road network, creating many of the signs we see today and produced two new typefaces: Transport and Motorway.

Horses or Ponies. Reproduced to scale

50th Anniversary of the British Road Sign. Proin pharetra nibh sit amet rhoncus ornare. Maecenas quis eros nec dui sagittis scelerisque. Nam faucibus semper sollicitudin. Fusce convallis non orci eget blandit. In eget orci non est mattis finibus vel non lorem. Etiam sit amet mauris sed dolor feugiat vehicula.

Vestibulum bibendum ipsum non turpis ultricies tempus. Sed luctus vulputate augue, eu egestas sem malesuada ac. Quisque semper, lorem at ultricies interdum, metus turpis tincidunt eros, quis semper ex elit a nisi. Praesent nibh metus, ultricies non lectus quis, auctor rutrum risus. Integer sollicitudin ligula in lacus tincidunt pulvinar.

Margaret Calvert in her studio. Portrait by Steven Speller

Kinneir Calvert

Margaret Calvert. 2015

Jock Kinneir died in 1994, but his work has remained a lasting tribute to him. His road signage system has been modified over the years, and its devotees often complain that Britain’s road signs have become progressively sloppier. It adapted well to brown background signing for tourist attractions in the 1980s, but then suffered somewhat from 1994 onwards with the introduction of large coloured panels – signs within signs. It is testimony to the rigour of Kinneir and Calvert’s original work that their fonts, pictograms and most of their design rules are still in use today, having been built into the computer software used for sign design and manufacture. However, it is an unfortunate by-product of this digitisation process that some symbols have lost their crispness and distinct characteristics due to repeated retracing over the years. As Kinneir acknowledged, like all exemplars of information design, his and Calvert’s road signs fulfil their function so efficiently that the public tends to take them for granted and rarely acknowledges their design merits.

It is sad but true to say that most of us take our surroundings for granted,” Kinneir observed in 1965. “Direction signs and street names, for instance, are as vital as a drop of oil in an engine, without which the moving parts would seize up; one can picture the effect of the removal of this category of information on drivers in a busy city or on pedestrians trying to find their way in a large building complex. It is a need which has bred a subdivision of graphic design with more influence on the appearance of our surroundings than any other.

Contributors

A Practice for Everyday Life Adrian Shaughnessy | Unit Editions Alan Aboud | Aboud Creative Alan Dye | NB Studio Alan Kitching Amelia Noble Andy Altmann | Why Not Associates Anthony Burrill Aubery Powell | Hipgnosis Ben Casey | The Chase Ben Drury Ben Kelly Ben Stott Betty Jackson Cafeteria Cartlidge Levene Craig Oldham Damien Poulain Damon Murray & Stephen Sorrell | FUEL Daniel Ayuso | Clase BCN Daniel Eatock Dominic Lippa | Pentagram Dust Dylan Kendel | Tomato Erik Kessels | Kesselskramer Erik Spiekermann Fernando Gutiérrez Florence Blanchard Frith Kerr George Hardie Gert Dumbar Graphic Thought Facility Hector Pottie Henrik Kubel | A2-TYPE Human Studio Humphrey Ocean Ian Anderson | The Designers Republic™ Ilse Crawford | Studio Ilse Jeremy Leslie | magculture Jonathan Barnbrook Julian House | Intro

Kate Gibb Lewis Moberley Lundgren+Lindqvist Malcolm Garrett Marion Deuchars Mark Bonner | GBH Maurus Fraser | Winkreative Michael C. Place | Build Michael Johnson Michael Wolff Mike Dempsey Milton Glaser Morag Myerscough Neville Brody | Brody Associates Nick Bell Nick Deakin Noma Bar Non Format Patrick Murphy PearsonLloyd Pete McKee Peter Till Phil Carter | Carter Wong Practise Quentin Newark | Atelier works Richard Seymour Rick Banks | Face37 Rob Ryan Rogers | Stirk | Harbour Ross Kinneir Sara De Bondt Sean Perkins | North Sir Kenneth Grange Sir Peter Blake Sir Terence Conran Stefan Gandl | Neu Bau Studio EMMI Tom Hingston | Hingston Studio Tony Brook | Spin Vaughan Oliver Vince Frost

Neville Brody

Neville Brody is a leading typographer and internationally recognised art director and brand strategist. He has received numerous awards and honours, including the D&AD President’s Award (2011). Brody became dean of the School of Communication and head of the Visual Communication programme at the Royal College of Art in January 2011. brody-associates.com

‘Britain, once heart of empire, can open its gates, land and minds to the peoples of the world desperately in need of our support and welcome in escaping wars, often ones ensuing empirical deformation. The political black spot needs to be overcome, and the tunnel seen as a link, not portcullis. Stop, Look, Welcome’.

FUEL

Damon Murray & Stephen Sorrell

FUEL is a design group formed by Damon Murray & Stephen Sorrell, the studio combines commissions with projects of their own.

They publish self initiated work alongside work made in close collaboration with artists and authors through FUEL Publishing. As well as their work in print they have produced and directed short films, idents, film titles and TV commercials. fuel-design.com

NO RIGHT TURN

Mark Bonner | GBH

GBH is a design studio formed by Jason Gregory, Mark Bonner and Peter Hale in 1999.

It works internationally across disciplines solving communications problems for clients such as Apple, Puma and Royal Mail. Mark is currently President of D&AD and is a regular judge in industry awards schemes. He is also a visiting lecturer at Kingston, LCC and New Bucks Universities. gbh.london

Jonathan Barnbrook

Sign reference quote by JG Ballard about the role of the car in society. James Graham “J. G.�

Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist

Jonathan Barnbrook is a graphic designer pioneering the notion of graphic design with a social conscience, Barnbrook makes strong statements about corporate culture, consumerism, war and international politics.

Working in both commercial and noncommercial spheres, Barnbrook combines originality, wit, political savvy and bitter irony in equal measures. barnbrook.net

Kate Gibb

Kate has worked as a printmaker and illustrator.

She is renowned for her music-related sleeve artwork, most notably for a long standing relationship with The Chemical Brothers.

Non-commercially she continues to explore the silk-screen process, its tactile nature and subtle nuances providing the many graphic characteristics typical of her one-off pieces and hand-screened editions. kategibb.com

Beatles – North (featured) Stones – South

Sir Terence Conran

My main concern was cyclists being in a collision with trucks and this gory sign should be erected at dangerous road junctions. It it meant to frighten cyclists so they take care and also to remind truck drivers to look in theor mirrors.

I would also like to see signs for heritage sites where the buildings are depicted with the elegance of a steel engraving rather than the rather coarse depiction seen on the brown signs in France. I think these signs could be important to the general public and for tourists.

Design by Sir Terence Conran Drawing by Toby Gallagher, Toad Custom Cycles

Sir Terence Conran has had more impact than any other designer of his generation on everyday life in contemporary Britain though a series of parallel careers. He founded home furnishing chain Habitat in 1964. The success of Habitat further fuelled Conran’s retail ambitions and in 1973 he opened The Conran Shop. In 1989 he founded the Design Museum at Shad Thames.

He has written over 30 books reflecting his design philosophy, selling over 20 million copies worldwide. Conran has also created various restaurants including the Soup Kitchen, Quaglino’s, and Mezzo. conran.com

Aubery Powell

Aubrey Powell co-founded the album cover design company Hipgnosis with Storm Thorgerson in 1967. Hipgnosis created some of the most innovative and surreal record cover art of the 1960s, 70s and 80s for many bands including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney.

Since 1982 Aubrey Powell has been involved in film making, first as a producer and writer and then as director. aubreypowell.com

Vaughan Oliver

Vaughan Oliver is most noted for his work with graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23.

Both studios maintained a close relationship with record label 4AD between 1982 and 1998 and were to give distinct visual identities for the 4AD releases by many bands, including Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints, Pixies, and Throwing Muses. v23.biz

Fred Deakin As half of the band Lemon Jelly Fred Deakin has been Mercury and Brit nominated, sold over half a million albums and headlined stages at almost every major UK music festival.

In 1998 he co-founded the design agency Airside which won and was nominated for two BAFTAs, eleven D&ADs, four Design Week Awards including Best In Show, a Webby and many others. Deakin has been a tutor on Central Saint Martins’ MA Communication Design course since 1997. freddeak.in

‘I put the traditional road signage vernacular through a Fred filter to see what would happen and this is the result. I’m not sure where you would get to if you used it as directions but it would be interesting to see where you ended up!’

Graphic Thought Facility

Graphic Thought Facility (GTF) is a design consultancy based in London. Established in 1990, GTF is run by three directors – Huw Morgan, Paul Neale and Andrew Stevens.

GTF has been invited to exhibit and talk around the world and their work is held in public collections in Europe and America. In 2008, ‘Graphic Thought Facility – Resourceful Design’ became the Art Institute of Chicago’s first ever show dedicated to the output of a single graphic design studio. graphicthoughtfacility.com

Amelia Noble Amelia Noble studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art (1992–1995). After 11 years as Partner and Director of Kerr|Noble — she set up her own studio ‘Amelia Noble & Partners’ in London, and works as a designer and creative consultant.

Clients past and present include: Artangel, Arts Council, Barbican Art Gallery, British Council, Caruso St. John Architects, Charities Advisory Trust, David Chipperfield Architects, Design Council, Faber & Faber and Heatherwick Studio, amelianoble.com

Andy Altmann Why Not Associates Why Not Associates are a British graphic design company formed by Andy Altmann, David Ellis and Howard Greenhalgh. For nearly 25 years, Why Not Associates have been creating innovative work in many different media, including corporate identity, digital design, motion graphics and television commercials direction, editorial design, environmental design, publishing, and public art. whynotassociates.com

Henrik Kubel Henrik Kubel graduated from Denmark’s Design School in Copenhagen in 1997 and received his MA from Royal College of Art in 2000. Upon graduation he formed design and typography studio A2/SW/HK (based in London) with fellow graduate Scott Williams. In 2010 the duo established A2-TYPE to distribute a decade’s worth of specially crafted fonts. Henrik worked in close collaboration with Margaret Calvert in digitising and creating new releases of both Transport and New Rail Alphabet typefaces through A2-Type foundry. a2swhk.co.uk / a2-type.co.uk

Mike Dempsey

Studio Dempsey was formed in 2007 by Mike Dempsey after running the highly successful design consultancy Carroll, Dempsey and Thirkell, which he formed in 1979 following a decade in publishing. During his career he has won awards, including: the New York Art Director’s Club Silver Cube, the CSD Minerva Award, ten D&AD Silvers, the coveted D&AD Gold award, and a special Black Pencil for most awarded designer in D&AD’s 50-year history.

Dempsey is a member of Alliance Graphic International, and a past President of D&AD. studiodempsey.co.uk

Prints

In celebration of this project we asked Margaret Calvert to choose five of her favourite sign designs. These have been reproduced to scale and turned into A0 prints to commemorate the impact these designs on our shared design heritage.

The five signs are: Children Road Works Cattle Wild Animals Horses and Ponies The prints are available as signed screenprints

For more information about the project visit www.britishroadsignproject.co.uk

Thank you: Margaret Calvert & Ross Kinneir and all creatives who took part in this project.

Published by:

ISBN: 9781916136915 madenow.co.uk

Project supported by:

Original artwork and images Š Margaret Calvert. All rights reserved.

Text excerpts Š Design Museum.

Edited for British Road Sign Installation 2015 Contributor: Simon Morgan, Buchanan Computing