Promotional sign in Kyoto, Japan - photograph Else Kramer

Week 4 - Episode 21 - Seductive Signs

February 21, 2019

Some signs direct, other signs warn…but there are also signs that seduce.

Eat here, buy me, trust me…vote for me!

Signs to lure people into taverns were already in use in the Roman Empire. And during the Middle Ages, traders were allowed to use signs to direct people to their establishments.

In 17th century Europe signs got so large that they were making traffic rather difficult - and becoming a danger to the public. Signage regulation became necessary - as it still is today.

We are so used to being surrounded by seductive signage that it hardly registers anymore.

Today, notice how many times and in how many different ways signs are trying to seduce you.

Promotional sign in Tokyo, Japan - photograph Else Kramer

Share the seductive signs you spot using the hashtag #kramerseye on Instagram or Twitter.

Listen to today’s podcast

Week 4 - Episode 20 - You Have Been Warned

February 20, 2019

“Danger of death" redirects here.” - what a thrilling opening to a Wikipedia article.

What could possible go wrong? Well, honestly, a lot.

Today is all about danger - and how authorities and others try to help us avert and avoid it.

This is relatively new. Most signage appeared when people started driving cars. Before then, it was just bad luck, or stupid, or both if you fell off a cliff, ate cyanide, etc.

But nowadays it’s hard to walk a couple of hundred metres without encountering some warning sign.

Caution: wet floor.

Beware of falling rocks.

Do not feed the beast(s).

A lot of effort goes into preventing harm, serious injuries, and death.

As for road signs: they do vary in different countries, with warning signs being mostly triangular or diamond shaped. The European ones were standardised during the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which makes it pretty easy to safely drive around Europe. Unless you’re on a roundabout in Paris or Rome of course.

Warning signs are especially abundant in places like amusement parks.

What could possible go wrong? Well…

Today, keep an eye out for all the warnings you receive.

Stay behind the yellow line.

Look left.

Beware of the dog.

And never, ever, feed the wild monkeys.

Warning sign in Chion-In, Kyoto - photograph Else Kramer

Do be careful - and share your warning signs using the hashtag #kramerseye on Instagram or Twitter.

Listen to today’s podcast

Paleolithic stick figures - origin unknown

Week 4 - Episode 19 - Stick Figures

February 19, 2019

Since the earliest cave paintings, we, as humanity, have tried to picture ourselves.

The easiest way to do that is through what is now known as the stick figure: a very simplified version of the human body which is immediately recognised as such by all of us.

Stick figures are used to explain, to amuse (one of my favourite comics, xkcd, needs nothing more), and of course to signal - which is what we’ll be focusing on this week.

It’s very fitting that I’m in Japan this week, because the first international use of stick figures for signage originates here. In 1964, designers Masaru Katzumie and Yoshiro Yamashita created the first international pictograms for the 1964 Tokyo Symmer Olympics, using stick figures.

“Since Japan had not adopted the principles of the International Traﬃc Signs, introduced at the United Nations Geneva conference in 1949 and accepted by most European countries, the Olympics were regarded by graphic designers as an opportunity to establish a more uniﬁed and internationally legible symbolic language across the country. It was along these lines, searching for universally understood visual languages, that pictograms (ekotoba, in Japanese, a word used prior to the design of pictograms) were for the ﬁrst time designed for the Olympic Games” - Jilly Traganou ,in a paper on the history of Olympic design

For the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Otto Aichler took this to the next level, and gave us many pictograms still in use today. Like this one:

One of the things I love over here in Japan is the drama they add to their pictograms. You can see stick figures falling down, getting seriously injured, and when they dash, they really make a run for it.