15.02.2015

The most important and longest lasting graphic design job in the world had its fiftieth birthday in 2015: the British road sign system, designed by Jock Kinnear and Margaret Calvert, launched in 1965. You can read about it here.

Way back in 1992, a year after we began Atelier, we designed a desk calendar for our friend and client Jeff Doughty of Bull Signs.

We designed his logo: the warning sign for a bull - although when have you ever seen that sign? Maybe it is common place in the lanes of Northamptonshire? To match the logo, we chose to make light of the Kinnear/Calvert signs, playing on the ambiguity that comes from changing the context.

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We have produced a series of design ruminations and thoughts on the fifty year-old British road sign system; possibly the most important graphic design project in the world. The posts are:

FOLLOWING AESOP
A reimagining of the signs in animal form.

MIXING MEANINGS
Playing with what the signs can mean.

TROUBLE SHARING
Our designs for a celebratory exhibition at the Design Museum.

Quentin Newark