Sunday, October 23, 2011

Margaret Calvert & Jock Kinneir - Street Sign Graphic Design

Jock Kinneir (1917-1974) and Margaret Calvert (1936-) redesigned Britain's road and motorway signage system in the 1960s. This included the use of pictographic signs, a new font, clearly readable signs, and standardised colours and shape. They 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.

Margaret Calvert (1936-)

Children crossing sign - 1964 - Eager to make the school children crossing sign more accessible, Calvert 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.”

Modern Australian version of children crossing sign.

Men at Work Pictograph - 1964 - (Kinneir & Calvert)