We see them every day and take them for granted: our road signs.

They are perfect examples of well-designed, visual instructions. And to be read and understood at a glance.

I found this article again at my dentist and tore out the page from a Readers Digest. It describes the work of typographer Jock Kinneir and art student Margaret Calvert, from initial motorway signage in 1957 to eventual completion of all road signs in 1964.

Next time you’re out and about, have a little closer look at the road signs and marvel at their simplicity and clarity.

Most are well–known, some of which have been given a visual representation for the first time. Others were new to me. Together they are a highly practical reference point for any manager.
And even for teachers. Many of these tools could be used as part of a problem–solving activity.

The book has an accompanying website where more frivolous and humourous examples are given, one of which is shown below.

References:
The Decision Book: fifty models for strategic thinking, by Profile Books, ISBN 978-1846683954
http://50topmodels.wordpress.com 

Back in 1947, champion French downhill skier Emile Allais and photographer Pierre Boucher teamed up to produce this highly innovative instructional book on skiing techniques (“How to ski by the French method: Emile Allais technic” )

Just a few years ago José de Souza used this example in his PhD on visual instructional techniques. Visit his website to see more examples (http://publish.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/how-to-ski/#comment-1179).

Apparently this is quite a classic and copies can go for as much as £700 in antique bookshops.
Notice how the background has been cut out, predating the Dorling Kindersley method,  in order to reduce visual noise and accent the signal. Also note how the images and annotations work well together.

Yes, another Christmas present story. The Photographer is an astounding book. It’s 250 pages of photojournalism and comic book drawings of a Médecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders project in Afghanistan starting from 1986.

I’d never seen such a combination of photographs and drawings. The drawings themselves are a form of Ligne Claire style, formulated by Hergé the originator of the Tintin stories.

It’s a magnificent book and I recommend it highly.

Reference:

The Photographer (2003), E. Guibert, D. Lefevre & F. Lermercier, First Second,

ISBN 978-1-59643-375-5

That toy, as you can see, is a Meccano set. And in this instance it is of a seaplane from the Tintin story Shooting Star. As you can imagine, it’s all part of the big sell-on arising from the recent Tintin film.

But back to the point. Just look at the fabulous visual instructions. So very clear and simple to follow. The isometric projections allow you to see exactly the positions and relationships of all the parts.

Of perhaps some interest to some of you, Meccano was invented by Frank Hornby (of train set fame) in 1901. And that the term Meccano stemmed from Make and Know.

I just hope that bin used to collect the dog poos is not an open wire framed sort!

This website has the ambitious aim of collecting all the world’s icons, categorising them and making them all available to download for free (in editable svg files).

What more can I say, other than go…and enjoy yourself! Oh, you may also want to  notice how simple the site is — a nice reminder of focus and design in a world of increasingly complex and bewildering websites.

The address? www.thenounproject.com

A Target Map is a pretty simple visual tool. It’s a kind of Bulls Eye, with radiating levels of relevance, accuracy or, in this case, celebrity. Here, celebrities are distributed in relation to the centre according to their rank in the world of fame.

You could equally choose to categorise these distinctions, as newspapers do, with A listers, B listers and so on. Your Target Map might have corresponding circles, perhaps colour–coded, to represent these hierarchies.

This Target Map comes from the Entertainment Weekly magazine (I tore the page from my dentist’s pile of reading matter).

Here’s a good example of an attractive but poor visual instruction. Of course depicting a series of movements on paper is difficult but this is very misleading. 

Examine the red dashed arrowed lines. They are supposed to represent movement. But in image A, the verbal instructions simply tell you to “stand with feet hip width apart and feel the rhythm of the music”. In which case, what does that red dashed line indicate? Nothing at all.
Later in image B, the two red dashed lines indicate some sort of movement “moving one foot out, then switching feet”.

Yet only on the subsequent image C, is this foot action described “act as if you are squashing a bug on the floor”.  And what on earth is that straight dashed line meant to indicate? I think that it, along with the first line in image A, should not have been dashed. Dashed lines seem to show movement whereas these seem merely to point.

So The Guardian graphics department doesn’t get it right every time, eh?

Reference: The Guardian Weekend, 4 June 2011.