The Clearview thread

[JoePCool14]

Its hard to give your opinion on Clearview when your local DOTs screw it up and make it look like total shit. (I'm talking to you IDOT and ISTHA).

That said, if Clearview is used properly I do not think it looks that bad. It really is over-used in Illinois and is extremely frustrating.

However, on a side note, some of ISTHA's more recent signage has been improving excluding their occasional skip of an Exit tab or funky pull-through arrows.

[Billy F 1988]

I completely hate clearview. I hope whoever made it dies a slow and painful death.

That's a bit much. It's one thing to say that you have an issue with Clearview and whatnot, but to throw in a death curse along with that is just flat overkill. I mean, I have concerns for Clearview myself, but I'm not that stupid to wish death on whoever made Clearview because it's not just one person we're talking about. We're talking a whole group of DoT officials, FHWA, and more.

Please use better judgement next time.

[KG909]

I completely hate clearview. I hope whoever made it dies a slow and painful death.

That's a bit much. It's one thing to say that you have an issue with Clearview and whatnot, but to throw in a death curse along with that is just flat overkill. I mean, I have concerns for Clearview myself, but I'm not that stupid to wish death on whoever made Clearview because it's not just one person we're talking about. We're talking a whole group of DoT officials, FHWA, and more.

Please use better judgement next time.

Okay I was joking with the second part but the first sentence is 100% true.

[SignGeek101]

I don't mind either. No font is perfect (hence why Clearview was created in the first place)! I design signs in both fonts. What really gets me is when Clearview is used in negative-contrast applications (black on white, yellow) and Clearview in the route shield. I've said this on another thread that my city uses negative-contrast Clearview on its speed limit signs and route shields. It bugs me every time.

Near Toronto Pearson Int'l (Airport signage most likely, but still). One of the few Ontario Clearview signs.





Other than that, Clearview is a great font that has potential if some of its issues were fixed. But since the FHWA is cancelling its interim approval of Clearview, I guess we'll never see improvements.

It doesn't matter who does the signage in whatever font, if it's done right (ie. to the current standards set out in the MUTCD) it looks decent IMO.

MUTCD on Clearview:http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearviewdesignfaqs/

GMSV: http://goo.gl/maps/bYI8e

[spmkam]

Curious why French is above the English, it seems odd for the English speaking part of Canada.

[VCB02FromRoblox]

The only thing I don't like about Clearview is the numerals. That being said, I'm okay with both typefaces.

[CtrlAltDel]

Curious why French is above the English, it seems odd for the English speaking part of Canada.

In French, the name of the airport is "Aéroport international Pearson,"  and in English, it's "Pearson International Airport."  Putting the French on top avoids having to repeat the "Pearson"  part. This sort of combining is common in multilingual areas. For example in Brussels, the street signs mix Flemish and French, leading to things like "rue du Lombard Straat,"  and so on.

[jakeroot]

Reviving this thread because of something that just (incorrectly?) occurred to me:

The FHWA has no problem allowing some states to have basically unreadable-from-a-distance shields (Louisiana), but they feel the need to ban Clearview on route shields because legibility is apparently a hair too poor ... if they are so concerned about legibility, why do they allow states with completely insane shields with tiny numbers? Seniority?

If someone is going to respond with "Louisiana's shields are very visible", are you propounding that the shields, with Clearview numerals applied, have suddenly become out-of-focus hieroglyphics? Personally, I find that to be absolutely asinine (the numbers are still plenty readable), so what's the issue? If a state wants to use completely custom (unproven) colors, why can't they use (mostly proven) Clearview?

[Scott5114]

There is no cut and dried answer here:

1) Clearview is being held to a higher standard because it was allowed under an interim approval and not added to the MUTCD. An interim approval letter looks like this:

which refers to the Interim Approval for Use of Clearview Font for Positive Contrast Legends on Guide Signs. Note that neither of these say anything about how Clearview is to be used other than that Clearview is to be used only in positive contract situations and that cardinal directions must use the small-caps treatment. The Clearview circular, officially titled Design and Use Policy for Clearview Alphabet, appears to be more of an advisory document and may not have any binding power. That being said, states get away with directly contradicting the interim approval by installing negative-contrast signage (which Oklahoma does all the time) and by not doing the small-caps thing (which Texas does all the time).

2) As far as I know the strongest thing that has been done against states for failure to comply with the interim approval is to shame Maryland by putting photos of its signs in the Clearview circular and captioning them NOT ACCEPTABLE. This is because the FHWA doesn't have any real power to tell a state DOT what to do. They can refuse to fund the installation of traffic control devices which do not comply with the MUTCD–this is what got Florida on the colored US shields–but this appears to be done sparingly. Oklahoma, for example, is full of signs which don't meet MUTCD standards for interline spacing and margin width, but FHWA has, to my knowledge, never actually raised any objections. It's possible that FHWA only wishes to act when a large quantity of standard signs (i.e. not custom signs like freeway guide signs) is involved, which are blatantly not compliant to the MUTCD. Quibbling over things like margin width may be seen as so 'inside baseball' that if a flap over them occurred, and coverage went mainstream, the result would accomplish little but to embarrass FHWA in the court of public opinion. With Clearview in particular, the situation is complicated by the fact that an Interim Approval is involved, not the true MUTCD, so there could be a concern that if funds were withheld due to a non-compliant sign and the state involved fought it in court, that the FHWA might lose because the document involved is not as "bulletproof" as the MUTCD.

3) FHWA has a branch office in each state. Like any establishment with multiple sub-units, culture and best practices will vary from unit to unit (you can clearly see this in certain chain stores). Some FHWA offices are stricter than others. I believe there is some policy of rotating the management from office to office to prevent them from forming too strong of a bond with the folks at the state DOTs, but some degree of that doubtlessly happens anyway, especially if the junior staff is not similarly rotated. Regional culture may also come into play. Forum regular H.B. Elkins of Kentucky has argued several times that the MUTCD shouldn't regulate typeface at all, because he believes the federal government should have no power to dictate the design of traffic control devices to the individual states. I am not well-versed in Kentucky politics, but from what I do know I would imagine he's not the only person in Kentucky that would take that stance if the issue came up. The Kentucky FHWA office, then, would most likely be quite a bit more lax than, say, the New York one, simply because New Yorkers are much more tolerant of federal government involvement in local affairs than Kentuckians are. There's little desire to gin up a political fight over something so trivial as a road sign typeface.

4) The MUTCD does establish a minimum digit size for route markers. (If I remember correctly, it is 12" on a 24"×24" shield, or half the height of the shield.) The LA highway shield appears to not meet this criteria. It's possible that LaDOTD successfully convinced the Louisiana FHWA office that a smaller standard digit size was necessary to post some of their highway designations, which can theoretically contain up to five digits with hyphen, like "1363-5". Either that, or the Louisiana FHWA office simply doesn't care enough to raise a stink about it (see above with regards to inside baseball, although there's clearly a public interest in ensuring text is large enough to be legible).

[hbelkins]

3) FHWA has a branch office in each state. Like any establishment with multiple sub-units, culture and best practices will vary from unit to unit (you can clearly see this in certain chain stores). Some FHWA offices are stricter than others. I believe there is some policy of rotating the management from office to office to prevent them from forming too strong of a bond with the folks at the state DOTs, but some degree of that doubtlessly happens anyway, especially if the junior staff is not similarly rotated. Regional culture may also come into play. Forum regular H.B. Elkins of Kentucky has argued several times that the MUTCD shouldn't regulate typeface at all, because he believes the federal government should have no power to dictate the design of traffic control devices to the individual states. I am not well-versed in Kentucky politics, but from what I do know I would imagine he's not the only person in Kentucky that would take that stance if the issue came up. The Kentucky FHWA office, then, would most likely be quite a bit more lax than, say, the New York one, simply because New Yorkers are much more tolerant of federal government involvement in local affairs than Kentuckians are. There's little desire to gin up a political fight over something so trivial as a road sign typeface.

Wanted to address the above paragraph from two separate standpoints.

Concerning FHWA staffing, a gentleman by the name of Jose Sepulveda has been Kentucky's FHWA director for at least 10 years. He's retiring this year, from what I understand. And if you ever listened to him speak, that experience (coupled with the mere reading of his name) would tell you that he's not a Kentucky native. However, he has been here for a long time and I don't know of any wholesale shuffling of the Kentucky regional office staff. Jose is well-liked.

And concerning my stand on the MUTCD, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to have uniform traffic control devices. I think it's good that a "merging traffic" sign (W4-1 for those of you scoring at home) will look the same in Vermont as it will in New Mexico. I just don't think the feds need to get so specific as to dictate the use of certain fonts.

[national highway 1]

These trailblazers are also shocking...   

[Scott5114]

And that's why we don't put Series E on route markers!

[jakeroot]

And that's why we don't put Series E on route markers!

It's not too bad if done properly, but it certainly doesn't get my vote:

[Scott5114]

Yeah, it even manages to work well on the CO route marker, but that marker has a space set aside for the digits that Series E fills better than any other series.

[Alex]

These trailblazers are also shocking...   

No shocked shields pertains to Series C font used for a 2-digit route. 

[vdeane]

3) FHWA has a branch office in each state. Like any establishment with multiple sub-units, culture and best practices will vary from unit to unit (you can clearly see this in certain chain stores). Some FHWA offices are stricter than others. I believe there is some policy of rotating the management from office to office to prevent them from forming too strong of a bond with the folks at the state DOTs, but some degree of that doubtlessly happens anyway, especially if the junior staff is not similarly rotated. Regional culture may also come into play. Forum regular H.B. Elkins of Kentucky has argued several times that the MUTCD shouldn't regulate typeface at all, because he believes the federal government should have no power to dictate the design of traffic control devices to the individual states. I am not well-versed in Kentucky politics, but from what I do know I would imagine he's not the only person in Kentucky that would take that stance if the issue came up. The Kentucky FHWA office, then, would most likely be quite a bit more lax than, say, the New York one, simply because New Yorkers are much more tolerant of federal government involvement in local affairs than Kentuckians are. There's little desire to gin up a political fight over something so trivial as a road sign typeface.

That might explain the NY welcome sign situation.  The FHWA's version of events is "thou shalt not use URLs on road signs you must remove them at once" and NYSDOT's is "but other states have URLs on signs and you don't care about those".

[CentralCAroadgeek]

I remember about two weekends or so ago where I saw construction warning signs in Clearview, along the construction zones on CA-1 in Santa Cruz. As much as I don't dislike Clearview, it just looks really ugly on anything that's not BGS. It's just too thin to be effective on warning signs or whatnot.

[Zeffy]

I remember about two weekends or so ago where I saw construction warning signs in Clearview, along the construction zones on CA-1 in Santa Cruz. As much as I don't dislike Clearview, it just looks really ugly on anything that's not BGS. It's just too thin to be effective on warning signs or whatnot.

Well, I'll say that many of the street signs in Somerset County that use Clearview that aren't negative contrast are very legible from a distance. However, some of the street sign blades tend to look disproportionate because the legend takes up more than 85% of the total sign height.

[jakeroot]

I remember about two weekends or so ago where I saw construction warning signs in Clearview, along the construction zones on CA-1 in Santa Cruz. As much as I don't dislike Clearview, it just looks really ugly on anything that's not BGS. It's just too thin to be effective on warning signs or whatnot.

Well, I'll say that many of the street signs in Somerset County that use Clearview that aren't negative contrast are very legible from a distance. However, some of the street sign blades tend to look disproportionate because the legend takes up more than 85% of the total sign height.

At a reader meetup yesterday (25th of October, 2014), Alps, Kacie Jane, and I met and drove around Seattle. We spotted these Clearview warning signs near the Port of Seattle. None of us could tell that they were Clearview until we were right up close. I suppose that means they're working, right?

[SignGeek101]

I remember about two weekends or so ago where I saw construction warning signs in Clearview, along the construction zones on CA-1 in Santa Cruz. As much as I don't dislike Clearview, it just looks really ugly on anything that's not BGS. It's just too thin to be effective on warning signs or whatnot.

Well, I'll say that many of the street signs in Somerset County that use Clearview that aren't negative contrast are very legible from a distance. However, some of the street sign blades tend to look disproportionate because the legend takes up more than 85% of the total sign height.

At a reader meetup yesterday (25th of October, 2014), Alps, Kacie Jane, and I met and drove around Seattle. We spotted these Clearview warning signs near the Port of Seattle. None of us could tell that they were Clearview until we were right up close. I suppose that means they're working, right?

Those signs do look like they're doing the job. Not sure what width that is (3B?) I'm not an expert on Clearview widths. Still not a fan though. Here's one from my area:

[mjb2002]

Highway Gothic, hands down. Just looks better on signs, on paper, in advertisements, on weblogs and sites, in memes, etc.

[sammi]

In French, the name of the airport is "Aéroport international Pearson,"  and in English, it's "Pearson International Airport."  Putting the French on top avoids having to repeat the "Pearson"  part.

Downsview Park (which is within 10 minutes of here) is called "Parc Downsview Park", for the same reason as above. One time my history teacher said "Downsview Parc Downsview".

I also see this on signs outside government buildings. Near campus there's a "Édifice Whitney Block", and farther north there's a "5900, rue Yonge Street".

[SignGeek101]

A first for Quebec (at least from what I've seen). Look at the left shield. (NOT my pic)


 

GMSV: http://goo.gl/maps/JDP9f

[Fugazi]

A first for Quebec (at least from what I've seen). Look at the left shield. (NOT my pic)

Well... it doesn't actually look too bad (*ducks tomatoes*) but to me the Clearview shield isn't as instantly decipherable as the regular shields next to it. Something to do with the shape of the '2' maybe...

I've seen a few Quebec provincial route shields on BGS done in Clearview too, but they're few and far between and most likely production errors.

[Thing 342]

A first for Quebec (at least from what I've seen). Look at the left shield. (NOT my pic)

Well... it doesn't actually look too bad (*ducks tomatoes*) but to me the Clearview shield isn't as instantly decipherable as the regular shields next to it. Something to do with the shape of the '2' maybe...

I've seen a few Quebec provincial route shields on BGS done in Clearview too, but they're few and far between and most likely production errors.

IMO, this stems more from problems with the Autoroute shield than with font choice. They are far too busy.