NO DIRECTION HOME!

The chances are, if you own a car, or have been a passenger in a car, that you have, at one time or another, been lost. These days, more and more motorists are investing in a SatNav, in an effort to avoid such an occurrence. This satellite-guided technology is gradually doing away with the giant fold-out map, or large map book that would have permanently sat either in the glove compartment, or in the boot, along with jump leads, wheel braces, spiders and other assorted goodies!

These maps were an essential part of driving, necessary to guide and navigate your way through all the roads signs you’d meet on your way to your destination. And along with the trusty road map, was your faithful co-driver, who would be expert at reading maps and all prevailing road signs. The co-driver might be a husband/wife/partner or a trusty friend. Some people say that women can’t read maps, but that’s hasn’t been my experience. However, having said that, I don’t think my wife and I have ever been on a journey – long or short – where we haven’t had a small argument as to where we should have turned off, whether we’re going in the right direction etc. It has become standard practice to go round the roundabout at least twice, in the hope that we will know clearly which exit to turn off on. I wonder how many other drivers do this. One saying which has become the norm is .... “You’ll need to speed up soon, as there’s a build-up of traffic behind us now. More often than not, in spite of pretty good directions, I seem to always end up lost and if I was in any doubt, the words .... “Why don’t you swallow your pride and stop and ask that person, over there, for help.” It has to be said that it is humiliating, when you have to admit that you don’t have a clue where you are or, more importantly, the way you should be going!

And do signposts help? Not always!! Up until the 1950’s, road signs were made of all kinds of shapes, colours and sizes and varied greatly from count to county. Signs could be erected by anyone from the AA to Cycling Clubs. They were often far too wordy, leaving the driver confused. They were far too literate rather then visual. The architectural critic, Ian Nairn summed it up when he wrote ...
“putting everything into words on road signs had turned the whole landscape into a legal document”.


When motorways arrived, the need for clear directions became urgent. 

The poor unfortunate, who was given the job to sort out this mess, was Richard Kinneir (known as Jock). He was a lecturer at the Chelsea College of Art. He had previously attended the same college as Henry Moore (the sculptor), thinking he would pursue art as a career. However, after the war, he gave up on the idea of being an artist and became an designer instead. He worked for the New Central Office of Information in the Design Research Unit and described himself as being
‘a visual engineer’. 

In the mid 1950’s, Kinneir had a neighbour, David Allford. One day, when the two of them were waiting for a Greenline bus, to Hyde Park Corner, they got talking. Allford was an architect, who had just won the contract to design Gatwick Airport. On the strength of their conversation, he asked Kinneir to design the now famous yellow-on-black direction signs, which became British Airways standard signage. Colin Anderson, Chairman of the P&O Shipping Line heard about the new Gatwick signage, so he commissioned Kinneir to sort out his company’s chaotic baggage labelling system and he did so, very successfully. When Anderson was made chairman of The Advisory Committee on Traffic Signs for Motorways, Kinneir was given the job of chief designer.

Kinneir tackled the job by firstly drawing on some random research carried out on how easy it was to read road signs, which had been carried out in California. This research suggested that a driver, travelling at 70 mph, took about four seconds to absorb the information on a road sign. Also, the maximum safe angle at which a driver could safely direct his gaze was approx fifteen degrees. With this information, he set to work, estimating how easily a driver could read a sign when travelling on motorways, bearing in mind that British motorways had three lanes with a hard shoulder.

First of all, he proposed to do away with the panels where place names were and make better use of the space. No problem there! The second thing – and here is where he ran into opposition – was to ditch the block capital letters and replace them with an upper and lower case Sans Serif (without serif) font. The decline of the capital lettering had first begun in Victorian times. In 1920, the modernist architect, Adolf Loo, stated 
“One cannot speak in capital letters”. 

The Sans Serif font was first used in Low-Church Chapels and expensive shops, where a sort of class system existed. For instance, rich customers like the sales people to be aware of their inferior status. The San Serif font had been used by Edward Johnson, on the London Underground, since 1913, but the sanserif font had been mainly used by avant-garde movements like Bauhaus.

In the 1950’s Britain was abandoning capitals more and more, but doing away with the serif was a step too far! In Oxfordshire, a county surveyor tried to use a mixed-case Sans Serif in his signs. However, he was told by The Ministry of Transport to remove the signs immediately!



It has to be said that Kinneir was a very English modernists, who believed that a modern, clean Sans Serif font in upper and lower case would prove much easier to read than then signs made of all capital letters. Capital letters would be better used sparingly, at the beginning of words only where they would be more effective. Also, it is worth noting that Kinneir didn’t like the mixed-case Sans Serif used in European countries. He felt the German DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norman) used on the Autobans, was too cold. Instead, he came up with a new font and called it, simply, Transport. He seems to have based this font on the 1890’s German font Akzidenz Grotesk. 


This new font, Transport, was a softer font, where the ‘o’ appeared as being more rounded, curved stalks on the ‘a’ and loops on the ‘l’. Kinneir also came up with a gentle colour scheme – zinc white lettering on a marine/azure blue background. He had a young assistant working with him called Margaret Calvert who had been his student at the Chelsea College of Art. She prepared the mock-ups for the signage and when they were happy with the spacing in the studio, they began testing them. Firstly in underground car parks in Knightsbridge and then propping them up in random places like on trees in Hyde Park etc, where they would walk towards them slowly, noting at what point they became readable. And all to the bemusement of onlookers, of course!

After that, they were tested at Hendon Airfield, by racing driver Lord Waterman. He was instructed to drive past the signs at high speed viz as fast as he could. Lastly, they were tested on stretches of the Preston Bypass and the M1, by police cars, driving at approx 90 mph.

It has to be said that, when the provisional roadsigns were unveiled, they provoked much debate amongst the typographers of the day. One complaint from landscape architect stated they were
“too big, badly coloured and looked like they had been designed by lunatic drivers !” 
Other critics included David Kindersley and his friend Brooke Crutchley a printer at Cambridge University Press. The debate over signage even ended up on the BBC programme “Tonight”.

By the time all debating was done and alternative fonts put forward by Kindersley, the provisional signs on the Preston Bypass and the M1, had already been in use for a year and had worked well, so they stayed in place !

Kinneir later recalled the ecstatic moment when he realised how well the signs had worked. He had been offered a lift in Lord Waterman’s Jaguar, back to London, from a meeting in the North and Waterman put his foot down and drove along the M1 at 95 mph, whereupon Kinneir was delighted to see that his signs were legible, not only at high speed, but also at night, in cover of relative darkness.


Joe Moran Abridged extract from ‘On Roads – A Hidden History by Joe Moran. Chapter 3 pages 62-66. 




Margaret Calvert talks to James May on TopGear