The Worst of Road Signs

[Central Avenue]

Helvetica has that thick a stroke? 

Some weights do...that looks like the Helvetica Bold that comes with a lot of computers.

I like Helvetica on its own, but more often than not, when it's used on road signage it just comes off as lazy, in an "I can't be arsed to use something other than the default font" kinda way.

[agentsteel53]

what program has Helvetica as the default?  most Microsoft is Arial... except nowadays it is Verdana or Calibri or what have you, so I am surprised we do not see those fonts on highway signs.

I've never really liked Helvetica.  not even for Swiss railway stations or what have you.

[Central Avenue]

A lot of stuff on Mac OS X has Helvetica as default...I know Mac is the preferred platform for a lot of graphic design work, so it wouldn't surprise me if people who didn't have access to proper CAD software were putting together road signs on one...

[Scott5114]

Helvetica...

Helvetica has that thick a stroke? 

it's probably a bold or black variant. Still Helvetica.

Helvetica occupies the niche in a designer's mind that Arial does in the general public's; that is, it is regarded as the "default" sans-serif font. You want something as plain as vanilla that's all business? Well, you want Helvetica, then. Arial is regarded as a cheap knockoff of the Real Thing that a purist would never be caught dead using.

Helvetica does come with many Linux installs but it is a free version called "Nimbus Sans". You wouldn't know it's Helvetica unless you decided to try it out, and "Oh, hey, Helvetica."

[national highway 1]

Acorn shields: :O




Bulbous NH shield

Stretched by aliens in Roswell NM

Alabama...; though I like the 'BUS' in the shield

[Kacie Jane]

Someone's begging for a fish.

[EmeraldCoast93]

Alabama...; though I like the 'BUS' in the shield

Not Alabama... this is Pensacola, FL near the southern terminus of I-110... but I do like the business banner within the shield

[national highway 1]

Someone's begging for a fish.

Knock it off, will you?

[Kacie Jane]

Someone's begging for a fish.

Knock it off, will you?

Take a look at the previous page, count the times the US 6/PA 666 assembly (the sign that sparked the Helvetica discussion at the top of this page) appears, then get back to me.  The US 15 shield was also on the previous page, and the I-68/US 220 assembly only 3 pages back.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

This is NOT how you put an exit tab on a sign:

Located on I-5 north in Red Bluff.

[Central Avenue]

I don't know why, but that made me giggle.

[vtk]

This is NOT how you put an exit tab on a sign:

Located on I-5 north in Red Bluff.

I think that's a creative solution to Caltrans' lack of mounting specs for a normal exit tab.

[1995hoo]

Continuing on not being the proper way to mount an exit tab, I've been commuting to Reston, Virginia, for the past two weeks and this sign has caught my eye several times on the eastbound Dulles Toll Road (VA-267) near Wolf Trap. The exit tab is what caught my eye, although when I loaded the picture to adjust the lighting I also noted the ugly fraction.

(Sorry about the graininess. It's been threatening to rain all day and it led to some bad lighting, so I ran it through a photo editor and hit "Auto Lighting" to bring out the sign a bit more.)

[agentsteel53]

it looks like the positioning of the exit tab, relative to the left edge of the sign, would be correct if it only said "EXIT 16A".  was this tab a replacement or overlay for precisely that smaller one?

[Takumi]

The "Leesburg Pike" text looks off, too. Maybe if it were a bit lower to match the VA 7 shield, it would look a little better.

[1995hoo]

it looks like the positioning of the exit tab, relative to the left edge of the sign, would be correct if it only said "EXIT 16A".  was this tab a replacement or overlay for precisely that smaller one?

Not that I recall. Exit 16–or whatever it was numbered before it became Exit 16 in 1995–has always had two ramps, one going to Tysons (current 16A) and a loop-around towards Leesburg (current 16B). But that whole sign is fairly new; notice it's in Clearview, which marks it as recent. That overpass up ahead was replaced, or at least substantially rehabilitated, in the past few years and the old sign was mounted on the overpass. It had the exit tab mounted flush with the right side.

The "Leesburg Pike" text looks off, too. Maybe if it were a bit lower to match the VA 7 shield, it would look a little better.

Agreed. Out of curiosity I found the old sign on Google Street View and I notice the "Leesburg Pike" text was a bit higher than VDOT usually puts that sort of thing. It makes me suspect the new sign was intended as a simple Clearview re-do of the old sign, with the distance tweaked appropriately for the new location, and somebody decided to copy it EXACTLY. That's not unprecedented for VDOT, as you may have seen the extremely hideous Clearview signs on I-395 at the VA-236 interchange.

Incidentally, that Street View image is SEVERAL years old, as it pre-dates the Metrorail construction. The grassy median on the inner carriageway (Dulles Access Road) has been long gone for several years (notice the fencing located beyond that cab in the picture I took today). I simply do not recall when the sign was replaced.

[kphoger]

This is NOT how you put an exit tab on a sign:

Located on I-5 north in Red Bluff.

Actually . . . I kind of like that.  Hmmmm......

[national highway 1]

what program has Helvetica as the default?  most Microsoft is Arial... except nowadays it is Verdana or Calibri or what have you, so I am surprised we do not see those fonts on highway signs.

I've never really liked Helvetica.  not even for Swiss railway stations or what have you.

The NYC Subway and the SIR uses Helvetica extensively. I actually quite like Helvetica, it's the clear, standard business-like, sans-serif font that has many good uses. Too bad it isn't on Windows... At least it's better than Clarendon.

This is NOT how you put an exit tab on a sign:

Located on I-5 north in Red Bluff.

Actually . . . I kind of like that.  Hmmmm......

I'm not sure about the width of the CA 36 shield, looks a bit bulgy to me. (Is that standard spec?). Also don't like the placement of the CA 36 shield, should be placed centered with the arrow between the two lines of legend.
The blank strip reminds me of the extra green space at the top of BGSes for California extenal tabs. This is just as strange as the Exit 54 exit number square on I-580 in Livermore.

[BamaZeus]

I don't think it would be so bad if the exit # background was a different color, or more importantly, it wasn't seemingly partially covered by a tree branch.

[myosh_tino]

This is NOT how you put an exit tab on a sign:

Located on I-5 north in Red Bluff.

This appears to be a retrofit of an existing reflective sign.  Because of the way the legend was laid out, it made adding an exit "tab" impossible so they did the next best thing... use the space to the right of the sign for the exit number.  Regarding the shield, yes it's a little funky but when the new reflective signs came out (and this signs appears to be one of them), the California route shields looked odd.  Some 3-digit shields had a flat bottom and the 2-digit shields did look like that.  Here's an example of some oddly shaped shields from the AARoads Gallery...


Getting back to the CA-36 sign, if it were to be replaced here's what it might look like...

[KEK Inc.]

Regarding the shield, yes it's a little funky but when the new reflective signs came out (and this signs appears to be one of them), the California route shields looked odd.  Some 3-digit shields had a flat bottom and the 2-digit shields did look like that.  Here's an example of some oddly shaped shields from the AARoads Gallery...

I wonder how much of that depends on contracting.  The CA-237/I-880 interchange has the shiny streetlight gantries that I haven't seen anywhere else in Caltrans. 

Of course, CA-237 is a mess.  It's been under construction from 1994 to 2014...

[WillWeaverRVA]

This is the counterpart to a picture Takumi posted earlier. What font IS this, anyway?

[rickmastfan67]

This is the counterpart to a picture Takumi posted earlier. What font IS this, anyway?

Looks like "Arial Rounded MT Bold" to me.

[flowmotion]

Looks like Dunkin Donuts to me.

[Central Avenue]

This is the counterpart to a picture Takumi posted earlier. What font IS this, anyway?

That would be VAG Rounded.

Arial Rounded is pretty close (so much so that I got them confused the last time this came up), but a few characters, including "R", are noticeably different.