The Clearview thread

[Central Avenue]

I still like Clearview. Not quite as much as the FHWA Series, but I don't have the contempt for it that many here seem to.

[Takumi]

^ I saw a sign with your namesake on the Capital Beltway yesterday that looked like it was in Clearview.

[cpzilliacus]

I saw a sign with your namesake on the Capital Beltway yesterday that looked like it was in Clearview.

Md. 214 (and Md. 332, directly east of the D.C. border). 

Central Avenue starts in the District of Columbia and heads almost straight east across Prince George's County and Anne Arundel County, and ends at the Chesapeake Bay.

[doorknob60]

A lot of the street sign labels on traffic lights in Nampa are now in Clearview (not sure when they changed them, I just moved here for school, but Google's images have old non-Clearview signs). Unfortunately I don't yet have pictures, but I could get some soon. I think they look pretty good though, better than the old ones even

EDIT: Got a pic, it was from out the window of a moving school bus, but good enough haha.


I've also seen some in other places in the area, such as Eagle, ID. I don't think there's any on the interstates though, I think they are all put up by local governments so far, none by ITD (as far as I've seen)

[Michael]

I was reading the Wikipedia article on RIROs last night, and one of the pictures was geotagged, so I opened it in Google Maps.  After going into Street View, I noticed this sign for the National Institutes of Health at the intersection.  To see the intersection itself, zoom out from the sign, then turn the view 90º to the right.

[Alps]

I was reading the Wikipedia article on RIROs last night, and one of the pictures was geotagged, so I opened it in Google Maps.  After going into Street View, I noticed this sign for the National Institutes of Health at the intersection.  To see the intersection itself, zoom out from the sign, then turn the view 90º to the right.

Now THAT is good looking Clearview. Maybe because it's not on a highway sign.

[brownpelican]

LaDOTD is doing a sign replacement project on I-10 in New Orleans proper over this weekend. My suspicion? Clearview.

[Scott5114]

I was reading the Wikipedia article on RIROs last night, and one of the pictures was geotagged, so I opened it in Google Maps.  After going into Street View, I noticed this sign for the National Institutes of Health at the intersection.  To see the intersection itself, zoom out from the sign, then turn the view 90º to the right.

Now THAT is good looking Clearview. Maybe because it's not on a highway sign.

No, it's just a particularly well-done application of Clearview. Properly spaced and not too large. I am still not comfortable with the different Clearview widths but I want to say that's Series 5W, which is probably the least offensive of the Clearview variants.

[brownpelican]

Confirmed: the new signs put up on I-10 in New Orleans proper are in Clearview.

[JMoses24]

I wonder if there was some road signs tested with Comic Sans MS? 

There are construction signs stating, "Slow down my daddy works here" in that horrible font. It's messy, little-kid scrawl, and reminds me of high school.

Apologies for bringing this particular one back up... but, the fact that it's "little-kid scrawl" is the point of that particular sign. It's designed to make you think that some kid's dad does work in that area, and that you should want them to be able to see their children.

That said, I otherwise do not endorse the Comic Sans font.

[Central Avenue]

Apologies for bringing this particular one back up... but, the fact that it's "little-kid scrawl" is the point of that particular sign. It's designed to make you think that some kid's dad does work in that area, and that you should want them to be able to see their children.

We worked that out, thanks. Still doesn't make it acceptable.

[kphoger]

I'm a little surprised at how much people on here loathe Clearview and swoon over the FHWA fonts.  From the studies people have cited, neither one stands head-and-shoulders above the other in terms of legibility–even when improperly used (wrong contrast, caps, numerals...).  Most people's opinions just seem to boil down to "it's not aesthetically pleasing to me, therefore I don't think it belongs on a road sign".  That doesn't seem like a roadgeek's response to me.  One font may do marginally better than the other in one situation, and the other better in another situation, but they're both pretty much on par with each other from a practical standpoint, so I have no problem with either one.

* kphoger steps down off the soap box.

[J N Winkler]

Most people's opinions just seem to boil down to "it's not aesthetically pleasing to me, therefore I don't think it belongs on a road sign".  That doesn't seem like a roadgeek's response to me.

Actually, it is a perfectly valid roadgeek's response.  What it is not is a valid engineer's response.  Roadgeeks are free to have aesthetic preferences; engineers are expected to rely on objective criteria in formulating a design policy with regard to choice of typefaces on signs.  This is why most engineers on here who have commented on Clearview have tended to focus on findings showing that Clearview does not have the promised advantages over the FHWA series (at least under situations typically encountered on the highway system), or that the advantages it does have do not justify the cost of changing all signs over to Clearview.

[kphoger]

Most people's opinions just seem to boil down to "it's not aesthetically pleasing to me, therefore I don't think it belongs on a road sign".  That doesn't seem like a roadgeek's response to me.

Actually, it is a perfectly valid roadgeek's response.  What it is not is a valid engineer's response.  Roadgeeks are free to have aesthetic preferences; engineers are expected to rely on objective criteria in formulating a design policy with regard to choice of typefaces on signs.  This is why most engineers on here who have commented on Clearview have tended to focus on findings showing that Clearview does not have the promised advantages over the FHWA series (at least under situations typically encountered on the highway system), or that the advantages it does have do not justify the cost of changing all signs over to Clearview.

Perfectly valid.  So why the knee-jerk reaction to brand-new signs (or ones that would have been replaced anyway) featuring Clearview legend, even when improperly used?  Maybe I just don't know who is an engineer and who is not, and all the knee-jerk reactions are not from engineers.  At any rate, my feathers get much more ruffled when the actual information on the sign is vague or misleading than I do by what font is used.

[Scott5114]

I have multiple reasons for not liking Clearview, beyond the aesthetic:

• The methodology used in the studies saying Clearview is better seem to me to be tilted in favor of Clearview by giving it advantages not afforded to the FHWA Series application it is being tested against. I seem to recall reading that in the test, the Clearview sample was X% bigger than the FHWA Series sample. How can we state for sure that the difference is not due to the font size?
• Clearview is copyrighted. FHWA Series is public domain. You have to pay a font license to use Clearview. This line item doesn't matter much to state DOTs, and gets amortized to nothing fairly rapidly, but for local governments, the cost is a greater percentage of the budget and applied to fewer signs. Cost per sign goes up.
  
• To use Clearview "correctly" according to the federal guidelines, you are restricted to using it to basically "road and location names with no numerals in mixed case on dark backgrounds" since that is the only situation in which Clearview is considered more legible than its competitor. If this is the only thing you are using it for, why bother? It is something of an aesthetic argument, but mixing fonts together willy-nilly like this is considered a general design flaw outside of road contexts.
• Some DOTs ignore the federal guidelines, in which case, also, why bother? You are using fonts which are shown to be on par or, in some contexts, worse than what you've already got.

[J N Winkler]

• The methodology used in the studies saying Clearview is better seem to me to be tilted in favor of Clearview by giving it advantages not afforded to the FHWA Series application it is being tested against. I seem to recall reading that in the test, the Clearview sample was X% bigger than the FHWA Series sample. How can we state for sure that the difference is not due to the font size?

Actually, the studies try to compare Clearview on an equal basis with FHWA:  same capital letter height and so on.  "Clearview sample so much bigger than FHWA" tends to refer to comparisons between FHWA Series E Modified and Clearview 5-W rather than Clearview 5-W-R.  The rule of thumb is that Clearview 5-W-R fits into the same footprint as Series E Modified, while the same message in 5-W is 11% wider.  The stylized comparison is that the additional 11% width buys reading distance 21% greater, while the contribution of 5-W to an increase in overall sign panel size is diluted somewhat by spacing requirements.

A more serious problem with the earlier Clearview studies is that they are based on draft versions of Clearview, so it is unclear whether the results reported in the studies are valid for the versions of Clearview that are commercially available.  The FHWA Clearview FAQ contains information on the comparative performance of Clearview and the FHWA series which I have not seen reported elsewhere in the research literature, so I think there is a significant amount of research and testing that has not been published.

• Clearview is copyrighted. FHWA Series is public domain. You have to pay a font license to use Clearview. This line item doesn't matter much to state DOTs, and gets amortized to nothing fairly rapidly, but for local governments, the cost is a greater percentage of the budget and applied to fewer signs. Cost per sign goes up.

AIUI, copyright over Clearview had to be waived in order for FHWA to approve it for use on traffic signs, so the real problem with Clearview from this perspective is not that the font has to be bought, but rather that it can be bought from only one source.

• To use Clearview "correctly" according to the federal guidelines, you are restricted to using it to basically "road and location names with no numerals in mixed case on dark backgrounds" since that is the only situation in which Clearview is considered more legible than its competitor. If this is the only thing you are using it for, why bother? It is something of an aesthetic argument, but mixing fonts together willy-nilly like this is considered a general design flaw outside of road contexts.

This is use of a different font in a structured way, so it isn't "willy-nilly"--it is more like using a different typeface for section headings in an academic book.  In fact, it is using only one font family (like Computer Modern) for all style elements in a book that is considered a design fault in some quarters.

A more fundamental argument, from a design perspective, is that Clearview is not fail-safe.  It is much easier to make basic errors in alignment and spacing with Clearview because there is much more variation in ratio of letter height to capital letter height with Clearview than there is with any of the FHWA series.  My personal view--and it is just that, not as an engineer (albeit with some scientific training)--is that an agency should not use Clearview unless it has the quality controls in place to ensure that it is used correctly on signs.[/list][/list][/list]

[kphoger]

I guess my point is that, even when Clearview is not used correctly, and even if its perfect-application legibility (given the study corrections you put forth) is somewhat less than its comparable FHWA font–the negative reactions to it I read on this forum far outweigh the real-world disadvantages to its use.  That is, Clearview from an engineering perspective might be slightly worse than FHWA fonts, but the negative reactions to it are far from slight.

[agentsteel53]

I guess my point is that, even when Clearview is not used correctly, and even if its perfect-application legibility (given the study corrections you put forth) is somewhat less than its comparable FHWA font–the negative reactions to it I read on this forum far outweigh the real-world disadvantages to its use.  That is, Clearview from an engineering perspective might be slightly worse than FHWA fonts, but the negative reactions to it are far from slight.

I think that's just how the internet works.

THIS OBJECT, PROGRAM, AND/OR SUGGESTION IS 0.36% MORE INFERIOR TO WHAT I'M USED TO!  HOW COULD YOU!!  CATS WITH CAPTIONS!!!238!!!

[J N Winkler]

In addition to Jake's observation about Internet discussion tending to magnify small contrasts, roadgeeks are to the ordinary driving population as bibliophiles are to ordinary consumers of print media.  Clearview is a large change in visual appearance for a legibility gain that is, at the margin, quite small for many age groups.  The population of this forum is also strongly skewed toward the young compared to the population at large, and young eyes benefit from Clearview to a much lesser degree than older eyes.

[Dr Frankenstein]

Regarding copyright, I think a detail has to be underlined here:

Typeface designs are not protected by copyright under the United States law. However, the ClearviewHwy font files are protected by copyright because they are computer programs.

This means that if someone makes their own implementation of Clearview by copying or tracing over renders, specs or pictures (like Mike did for the Roadgeek font set), they are not violating the copyright law.

[J N Winkler]

Regarding copyright, I think a detail has to be underlined here:

Typeface designs are not protected by copyright under the United States law. However, the ClearviewHwy font files are protected by copyright because they are computer programs.

This means that if someone makes their own implementation of Clearview by copying or tracing over renders, specs or pictures (like Mike did for the Roadgeek font set), they are not violating the copyright law.

All of this is true, but I don't think it adds up to a full picture of the legal position with regard to intellectual property in Clearview.  My understanding is that since the designers are not asserting copyright in the glyphs (which in any case does not exist in the US), it would be legally possible for a third party to create a full set of Clearview fonts by drawing them from the specs.  However, published specs do not exist for Clearview, unlike for the FHWA alphabet series.  So Clearview effectively has trade secret protection, which is obtained simply by refraining from publishing technical specs, not through an operation of law such as copyright or the granting of a patent.  I believe this is what allows Terminal Design to retain a monopoly on Clearview.

[Scott5114]

Keep in mind, kphoger, these are the rational arguments for which there is some attempt being made to be logical about it. These might be combined with a more intense emotional or aesthetic response.

Personally, my mind interprets the larger counter spaces on Clearview to be more "happy" and "inviting", which makes it seem dissonant on road signs, which are frequently telling you to not do X action. It's like seeing Comic Sans on your 401(k) statement.

[Takumi]

This was the first time I'd seen a Clearview mixed-case distance sign. Aside from the numbers, it looks surprisingly decent.

[Kacie Jane]

Keep in mind, kphoger, these are the rational arguments for which there is some attempt being made to be logical about it. These might be combined with a more intense emotional or aesthetic response.

Personally, my mind interprets the larger counter spaces on Clearview to be more "happy" and "inviting", which makes it seem dissonant on road signs, which are frequently telling you to not do X action. It's like seeing Comic Sans on your 401(k) statement.

It may be worth pointing out that the approved use of Clearview -- positive contrast -- is (perhaps coincidentally) typically not the type of sign telling you not to do X action.  I don't have a problem interpreting the above sign as "happily inviting" motorists to Hopewell, Seven Pines, or Mechanicsville.

[DaBigE]

This was the first time I'd seen a Clearview mixed-case distance sign. Aside from the numbers, it looks surprisingly decent.

Not to get too far off-topic, but I am really surprised to see that much sign area on just one post (what appears to be 2" square tube).   That assembly must see some nice 'helicoptering' in higher winds.