How not to design a sign
16 Jul
A real (ugly) sign.
On a walk this evening I noticed this gem of a sign. While I am a proponent of gun- and drug-free schools, I disapprove of ugly, poorly-designed signs. This sign is a card-carrying member of that group.
The first thing I noticed was the red Ghostbuster-style circle indicating that this district is firmly against the terrible "drug gun."
Putting both words in the same circle really confuses the message. There's room to put two smaller circles with one word each, which would then show each word struck through with a red line, rather than this oddity. And shouldn't those be plural? "Drugs" and "guns" are not allowed.
Looking further down it (kind of) makes sense. It's a drug- and gun-free zone! Oh, that does make sense... but the sign doesn't convey that message well. The large "free zone" at the bottom feels too separated from the words "drug" and "gun" that modify "free zone." And if you do read the sign as it's drawn, you'd have something like "a no gun or drug"-free zone... a bit of a double negative there.
Okay, so I'm pushing this a bit far. It's unlikely anyone would really be confused as to the intent of this sign. But it certainly isn't graceful or well designed when it easily could have been (starting with unifying the typeface and size, but I won't go there).
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“Ghostbuster-style circle indicating that this district is firmly against the terrible ‘drug gun.’ ”
I laughed at that line.
Yeah, after working in schools for quite some time now, you realize that government officials often don’t have the same appreciation for the impact of good graphic design that those in the for-profit sector do.
Interesting! Since they didn’t redline the words, the visual image says,
“One area, two partitions. One for drug and one for gun.”
But I had another thought. I checked a couple sites for drug/gun free signs and this doesn’t look like the standard one schools buy. Perhaps someone ‘in-house’ designed it, in which case — well it’s just a bad sign.
BUT.…
What if they had a contest and the kids got to be involved in designing it? Then I say, “Bravo!”