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Brief history of road signs in the UK
This need for a modernisation of the UK road signs came after a series of photos published called "mile a minute typography" by Herbert Spencer in Typographic 1961. This series of images photographed many of the signs he passed on a drive through London and how perplexing they were.
Graphic designers Jock kinnier and his assistant Margaret Calvert designed and created the new road sign system that was launched 1st January 1965. The sign system they created contains two typefaces, mixing both upper and lowercase letters, this is supposed to help legibility at speed. They also use a simple shape system for easy understanding, circular signs give orders, triangular signs warn you and rectangular signs inform you. They also introduced the use of simple images to replace some words, with the girls in the children's crossing sign being based of an image of Calvert as a child.
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