InfoD-Cafe: Typeface for wayfinding

[Alan Litchfield]

On 22/08/2008, at 12:07 PM, Frank Wales wrote:

> Deborah Taylor-Pearce wrote:
>> http://www.fontshop.com/features/newsletters/aug08b/index.html
>>
>> Not sure about some of the icons, though.
>
> I want to know what the designer has against arms, and why the  
> person in
> the top row is apparently bursting to go to the bathroom.  (Maybe  
> they're
> stuck trying to choose between doors labelled 'pair of tweezers' and  
> 'bell'.)
>
>> E.g., the 2nd from right in middle row: is this supposed to  
>> represent a baby?
>
> "Beware upside-down surprised pigs with mexican moustaches", perhaps?


It's quite simple really. It means "beware, road kill ahead".
>
>
> I'd also like to understand how come the 'car' outline has a bit  
> missing,
> why the 'bed' and 'straightened-out paper clip' symbols are in  
> circles,

What bed? The two circles seem to contain a B on its back and a ...  
well ... I think it is a football player doing a header, but I can't  
think why it needs to be memorialised in a symbol.


> and
> what a 'sleeping one-eyed pig' is doing between a 'caravan' and a  
> 'can opener'.

Hmmm. Pig, caravan and can opener? Boy I can't see those. But then I  
can never see the 3D images either.

"With FF Netto, Daniel Utz has stripped letters of any historical  
detail, leaving them with the barest, clearest forms possible. This  
makes FF Netto ideal for wayfinding, where quick recognition is  
essential."

I find this statement to be entirely contradictory. It is through  
knowledge of our world and what we have learned through experience,  
and therefore the apprehension of historical detail within the context  
of our world, that makes recognition of visual forms possible. When  
these details are stripped from images the result is something that is  
more easily misinterpreted, because they lack the cues that confirm  
the viewer's assumptions about their meaning. Of course there will be  
those who do not have the cultural or historical knowledge to make a  
correct interpretation, but what he has created is something that  
fails in even that regard. While it may be true that his goal was to  
produce a style that conveys meaning to a wider range of viewers,  
instead he has created one in which more are likely to misunderstand  
the meanings.

What it seems is the case here is there are icons in which there are  
distilled representations of his own understanding of the world. For  
example, there appear to be male and female forms shown, but they are  
represented by the most basic and stereotypical conceptions. There are  
some that I simply do not understand, for example what is that thing  
in the top row, second from the right?

The exit sign fails because the meaning in the icon is so stripped of  
meaning it has become necessary to add the intention of the sign in  
writing, but it is in latin text, and in English.

Alan
--
Alan Litchfield MBus(Hons), MNZCS
AlphaByte
PO Box 1941, Auckland, NZ. 1140
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz