Road signs and Irish Language

My thoughts are that this copies both good and bad ideas from Continental Europe, but by doing a complete clean-sheet redesign to address the problem of long place-names, you’re throwing away all of the good ideas that are present in the current system.

First off, yes, we need a properly-drawn condensed typeface: Irish signage would benefit greatly from a proper condensed version of the Transport face. (Italy uses a redrawn condensed Transport typeface, but unlike Transport, It does not seem to be sold commercially). Personally speaking, I do not like ClearView as a typeface, and I don’t think it is significantly more legible than Transport (the great claims made for the legibility of Clearview were in comparison with the FHWA Standard Alphabet series, a typeface that is distinctive, but hard to read).

Putting the junction-number on a separate plate makes the sign more expensive, and creates confusion with the existing practice of putting route numbers on upper plates for route-confirmation signs. I don’t see a good reason to have it separate.

The top-left arrow is pointing nowhere. I prefer the current design that is pointing to a road-lane. If you want to keep that orientation of arrow, moving it to the bottom left of the sign will convey the sense of “exit” better than the top-left.

Boxed route-numbers are one of the bad ideas you’ve taken from Continental Europe. These were a feature of pre-1960s signage systems that were rejected by the UK as soon as they did scientific legibility testing. The box outline is visual noise. If you’re going to devote that area of the surface to showing the route number, then use it all for showing the route number. If you must box the numbers, give them more space inside, but it’s better to not do it at all. One of the few good changes we made from the original British design guidelines was to enlarge route-numbers on direction signs; it seems a shame to abandon it.

I’m still unconvinced by the idea of yellow text for destination names. I do know the Greek signage uses it, and I think it’s too busy - the white version does away with the colouring, and looks better for it: the fact that the top line is in Greek alphabet and the lower in the Latin is enough of a distinction.

no. Safety should. The current signs could be much better- very confusing at speed sometimes

You are getting a bit emotive dude... over a road sign. No the sign is there to inform people... THAT is the reality. :)

Dont hate signs in multiple languages...Im simply discussing it and querying why the sinage is in two languages that people here both speak... the translation is not done to assist with comprehension.... as anyone speaking Irish speaks English too.. therefore its pointless....

Everybody here who speaks irish speaks english...if you dont speak irish its in English anyway... so whats the point in cluttering up signs....making them almost unreadable to fast moving traffic and spending money on producing and printing bigger signs in two languages. .

Im all for the promotion of the language but roadsigns should be containing only information 'needed' nothing else... Maira & Pat who are natural irish speakers can get on fine going from A to B with a simply clutter free easy to read and see ...

Oh yes. Yes, this is beautiful. What typeface is it?

@Strumms But what do we do for non-English speakers who are visiting Ireland? If English-speakers can't follow Irish signs safely, then if the signs are only in English non-English-speaking visitors will surely get terribly lost.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, there's no evidence - from Ireland or elsewhere - that bilingual signage causes confusion. And this is a much-studied question.

Think about how road signs work. A road sign is not a page of text that you read from one end to the other. Nor is it even a shopping list, on which every item is of equal importance to the reader. People don't read through a road sign and decide which destination they'd like to visit; they already know which destination they'd like to visit; they look for that name; they largely filter out the rest. And they don't find that name by starting at the beginning and reading through the text until they recognise the word the want; they take in the entire sign at one glance, and hone in on the bit they are looking for.

Because we write letter after letter, word after word, starting at the left and working across, and then down, the page, we assume that that's how we read. In fact it's not how we read. Even in a conventional page of text, the eye doesn't scan steadily across the page; it move in a series of jerks, taking in groups of words simultaneously. And most road signage has sufficiently few words in it that you can take them all in simultaneously. On a directional sign at a a junction, the groups of words associated with each direction will certainly be that small, even if the sign is bilingual. So, basically, you are looking for the arrow associated with a group of names that includes the name you want.

I like that. The use of Transport Heavy on our motorway signs is annoying - it reduces legibility at night, and it saves precisely no money given how these are now made.

The other thing you’ve done which is good is to add space around the destinations again. When using colour, you didn’t feel the need to do this, and it made it less obvious that these were just two places. Negative space between groups like this is important for understanding a sign.

(Incidentally, where did you get the newer Motorway font from? )

You say that it would be better to keep icons the same “for consistency sake”, but this is a common mistake graphic designers make when designing to conveying information. It’s also a common mistake when designing typefaces (another hobby of mine): a good design accentuates differences that are important, and removes the differences that are not, but if you go too far, you end up with “grey mush” design that has its distinctive points so smoothed away that it becomes taxing to read.

Boxed numbers are a legacy of German signage design, which has been adopted elsewhere in Europe. Germany doesn’t put route-type prefixes on its signs, so without some kind of box-in, road numbers could be confused for distances. The Irish signage system uses prefixes, so there cannot be confusion between Route 25 (“N25”) and 25 km (“25”). German practice was very influential across Europe, but it was developed without much reference to visual science. For example, the DIN 1451 type used on German signage was designed for ease of production, not legibility: it is not a very good typeface for sign design as its letters are too “samey”.

When the UK redesigned its signage, they started with the pre-existing US and German systems as a starting point, but subjected the design elements to legibility testing - some things got dropped as a result, and the use of outlined or decorated route badges was one of those. What they ended up with was a very good system, and we changed the one part that arguably didn’t work so well (overhead gantry signage), moving closer to European practice to create something that is, on balance, better than the UK’s long overlapping gantry boards..

A lot of other countries borrowed from the German system on the basis of it being something that was proven to be cheap to manufacture and work reasonably well. That’s not the same as being the best. Germany could correct some of the weak-points of its signage, but doing so would break the established practice, and consistency is an important goal too.

The boxed-in symbols are bad because they are hard to distinguish from each other. The unboxed ones are very obviously different. Being able to quickly recognise things is a key to good signage. (The reason why a port and airport should be given special treatment is easily answered with another question: what’s the Czech for Airport?)

P.S., and not wanting to wind anyone up, but given how similar the Irish and English versions are of those place-names, that sign would not be that much worse off without the English names on it at all. (Maybe keep “Belfast” out of courtesy)

I'm not sure what your question is. I guess she would follow roadsigns for Béal an Mhuirthead.

Béal an Mhuirthead is Béal an Mhuirthead. It has no other official name in Irish or English.

This is a repeat of the Firenze/Florence question discussed earlier in this thread. Just like the driver who doesn't speak Italian follows the signs for Firenze to get to the place she knows as Florence, the driver who doesn't speak Irish is perfectly capable of following signs for Béal an Mhuirthead.

I haven't met anyone who has been confused by Irish-only roadsigns, to be honest. But I'll let you know as soon as I meet someone who gets hopelessly lost because they can't find the signs pointing them to Belmullet, didn't check their route beforehand, and are unable to consult their phone, read a map, or ask for directions.

@Cookiemunster The official names for these towns should have been made Irish-only long, long ago, but now that the English name bedded in with the late 20th century influx of English-speakers, its use is probably not going to change without deliberate effort. And seeing as any deliberate effort to promote the use of Irish is met by howls of outrage from those who oppose the language, we probably won't see any of that.

The official name will remain mostly for officialdom (and, of course, those backwards Irish speakers. But they're not important.)

They're official signs to point the way to destinations, which is exactly what signs for Béal an Mhuirthead do. If you think they're just for show, why are you so bothered about Irish-only signs?

Sure mate.

I'd love to see a referendum on Irish and its place as our first language. I don't believe it was ever voted on and if it was it's due a discussion same as same sex marriage abortions and divorce all did.

Dnt get me wrong I love Irish and I like the road signs as they are but I'd just love to see the discussion on a national scale.

@EthanL13 Thanks for the link!

Regarding the whitespace, my mistake - I was still thinking of one of the earlier signboard designs on the thread.

"Route numbers on the other hand - I think we'll have to agree to disagree. To me it's the best way of highlighting them, it grabs the attention of the reader and it distinguishes them from the destinations."

That’s kind of the problem. It grabs the attention, but the colouring scheme you’ve used means that regional routes grab more attention than national primary routes, because a white block with black text drawn on dark blue is more distinctive than a green block with yellow text. That visual appearance is at odds with the true hierarchy, where N roads are more important than R-roads.

"You'd just have to hope that people will know that N roads are the main roads and R roads are not."

... and that’s precisely the problem that you avoid when you take colour away. Our roads are numbered with the most important routes given a low number. That pattern of low-numbers being important is well understood from all areas of life, so seeing "N12" or "R201" as options, without any colour-coding, or knowledge of the Irish road network you will guess correctly that N12 is a more significant route nationally than R201, because 12 is a lower number than 201.

The ship diagram is better, but the waves are extraneous detail: if it looks like a boat, it does not require “water” underneath - just like there’s no need to put a cloud beside the plane diagram. Fine detail like this just does not work on a road-sign, which has to be read quickly often in bad weather. Simple, recognisable, shapes work best, and sometimes you have to give up real-world accuracy for intelligibility (this is why the speed-camera looks like a bellows, why we have steam-trains on signs and why services show a fork-and-spoon not fork-and-knife).

You’ve also removed a useful piece of information from that ship diagram: the truck and car indicates that the destination is a Roll-on-Roll-off ferry service that takes both freight lorries and cars. Without any vehicles shown, it’s a direction to a bulk port, as here:

(Note how L34141 jumps out on this sign - it should be on a white patch with the name of that neighbourhood on it. Although in this specific case, where the road is literally for local access to about 10 houses, I think this is is where the old “Local Access” destination should be used)

"But in my opinion, it's pointless in redesigning our signs if they're going to remain almost identical as they are currently. There are clear attempts on the current signage to move away from the UK design, such as more European gantries, the (awful) chevrons on roundabout diagrams and the use of grey backboards on flag signs."

I understand that the use of the chevrons was a deficiency of the equipment originally used to make these signs, but as it is now how the signs look, it has to stay. We have avoided the big diagrammatic signs used in the UK, largely because they’re expensive, but also because they are a kind of information overload, especially on relatively simple junctions that really only offer a left or right turn. For most junctions, our simpler "left for these places, right for these places" advance signage does the same job without the space or fuss. Ironically, the one place where diagrammatic signs do help, in cities, is the one place where they look ugly and oversized.

Grey backgrounds on flag signs makes the signs cheaper and more durable (the point is very weak on a fully cut pointer flag, so they usually require a turned lip for strength, which is more expensive to manufacture) and also more legible, as you can use the backing plate to obscure other signage that might be the same field of view. It also makes the stacking of flag signs simpler and less irregular. I see that as an improvement over British practice, not a deficiency. (the design of the flags themselves can be poor sometimes, but that’s a different issue, and would happen with or without the backgrounds).

"If all the signs are to be replaced you may as well come up with a unique design, like I've done (though it's clearly not perfect), or at the very least replace the arrows with something better and use only one font for all signs."

But a clean-sheet design is not practical: we have thousands of kilometres of roads with the current signage installed. The general design of any new signage must be consistent with what else is in use, otherwise you’re just confusing people.

These aren’t designs, they’re the products of a design system, and that system has rules that people pick up without ever seeing them written down (e.g., distances are always to the right of place-names; an arrow tells you what turn is coming up, a fingerpost flag tells you where the turn is)

A design like yours that re-writes the basic principles of the system could never be applied without wholesale replacement of all signage, which would create needless confusion. When we moved to this system, we had no widely-applied systematic design for signage, so there was no loss; now that we do, adopting any completely new system would be a disaster.