Branding Britain's roads
Every now and then, a design job will come to represent much more than it was originally intended to. That was the case for Margaret Calvert and her colleague Jock Kinneir who, fifty years ago, designed the signage system for UK roads.
Calvert and Kinneir were initially commissioned to design signs for the first motorway in the UK. The simple, functional designs were eventually rolled out across the UK and have since become an integral part of the national landscape.
The simple, yet distinctive, signage system and the original typefaces that accompany it, Transport and Motorway, are now a part of Britain’s iconography and nation brand. The signs were also intended to convey a common language with Europe.
All of the road signs were created to be easily understandable at speed and the sky blue of the motorway signs are designed to both punctuate and complement the British landscape. While much of the signage consists of arrows, pictograms, such as the one that signals a school nearby, have more personality and, Calvert says, were based on her own experiences and people she knew, they were intended to be inclusive.
On the 50th anniversary of the British road sign, Made North gallery and the London Design Festival are hosting an event that pays tribute to the longevity and enduring effectiveness of Calvert and Kinneir’s designs and the impact that they have had across the UK.
