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Jewish World Review Oct. 8, 2013/ 4 Mar-Cheshvan, 5774 Missing the Signs By Lenore Skenazy
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | You know when you're looking for a store or an office and you drive past exactly where it's supposed to be and you can't find it, and you drive past it again and it's still not there, and you stop and swear and check your notes again or check your GPS or call your spouse to say that "something is totally screwed up!" (except you don't say "screwed"), and then you finally park and get out to look for it on foot and THERE IT IS, better-hidden than a polar bear in a blizzard in a nature documentary filmed with ice on the lens? There's a guy who studies this. James Kellaris is the Womack/Gemini professor of signage at the University of Cincinnati. Just last week, he was giving a talk at the National Signage Research & Education Conference — surely a high point of any sign researcher's year — reporting on the fact that 60.8 percent of American consumers have "driven by and failed to find a business because the signage was too small." That's up a couple of percent from recent years. Now, if the majority of us have failed to patronize a store we set out to find, that seems like a rather colossal failure on the part of the businesses, does it not? But Kellaris says it's not the businesses' fault; many municipalities legislate signage "size and placement." The goal is to keep the town from looking like Times Square. (And in fact, Times Square has its own signage dictates, requiring that it not look like your local strip mall where you can't find the walk-in MRI.) So maybe businesses aren't to blame for their stupid, tiny signs. But surely, they are to blame for other signage issues — such as the fact that two of my local groceries seem determined not to price their produce. Is the broccoli 99 cents a pound or $2.99 or a stunning $3.5 million? There's no sign giving me a hint. How much are the cucumbers? The celery? Often I leave the store without my veggies, simply because I don't want to stalk (ha-ha) the produce guy. Kellaris explains that produce prices change frequently, "so stores are challenged to keep up." But isn't that their job? Do models prance half-naked onto the runway because they have to change frequently and are challenged to keep up? And how about movie theaters? I remember when you could glance up and see what movies were playing because they were listed on the marquee. What a concept! But now that a lot of signs have gone digital, the titles zip by like electric eels. If somehow you manage to spot one, you immediately must commit to memory the times it is showing. Wait! Was it 6 or 9? And what was the movie again? Aggh!
He sure sounds like a signage apologist, doesn't he? But in fact, Kellaris is in our corner, fighting for better signage all the time: signs big enough to read and bright enough to be noticed. And radically enough, he even would like to see signs posted perpendicular to the street. "How can we keep our eyes on the road if we have to crane our necks 90 degrees to read a sign?" he asks. I'd add that ideally, every town in which I never have been before should have signs on absolutely every corner, because whenever I'm someplace new and trying to find a party or person I'm late for, there's an intersection with four distinct corners — and maybe even a stop light — but zero street signs. So, cities and stores of America, hear our plea: We want to find you, but to do so, you've got to give us a sign. A big one.
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