New York street signs get a much needed redesign

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Drivers in Manhattan will soon see just how much impact good type design can have in their daily lives, as the city of New York has begun the process of replacing its notoriously confusing parking signs with new ones designed by Pentagram. In total, over 6000 signs are being replaced in an effort to make parking rules much easier to understand at a glance.

The old signs were so hard to read that some people thought the city made them bad on purpose to deliberately confuse drivers into getting tickets, thus adding to the city’s coffers. The new signs use consistent formatting, fewer words, left alignment, and reorder the information about days and hours.

The redesign also is an example of “less is more,” as some of the signs are smaller, and use much less text to convey the message. The number of characters on some signs has been reduced from 250 to 140, making parking instructions now the length of a tweet.

Even though the consensus is that these signs represent a huge improvement, some have voiced small complaints like the left-aligned arrows (which are more appropriately centered), and the miniscule dashes that replaced en dashes.

For more info on the process and thinking behind the redesign, check out the interview with Michael Bierut of Pentagram at The New York Observer.

Editor in Chief of CreativePro. Instructor at LinkedIn Learning with courses on InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape, and Affinity Publisher.
  • Anonymous says:

    I agree with the issue of centering the arrows, but that’s minor. The new signs are a HUGE improvement! I’m keeping this photo as a good example of “less is more.”

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