Acclaimed design studio Pentagram has worked with the New York City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) to create new, simplified parking signs that are more easily understood.
Unlike the old signs, the new ones have a more consistent and simplified layout that reduces the number of words from 250 to about 140—making the signs less visually cluttered.
The words have been aligned to the left, and the typography appears in both upper and lower case set in a ‘uniform font’—‘Highway’, a font widely used in US DOT signage.
The new signs place the day of the regulation before the hours of regulation—eliminating abbreviations and retaining all the necessary information for drivers.
They have also been divided into two sections—one for commercial vehicles (in red) and the other for passenger vehicles (in green).
“New York City’s parking signs can sometimes be a five-foot-high totem pole of confusing information,” said DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “Parking signs play an important role in setting the rules at the curbside and these changes will make regulations easier to read and take the stress out of figuring where and when you can legally park.”
According to a press release, “The new simplified signs will be located throughout Manhattan’s paid commercial parking areas, running generally from 60th Street downtown to 14th Street and from Second to Ninth Avenues, with additional areas in the Upper East Side, Lower Manhattan and the Financial District.”
“The 6,300 signs that DOT will replace in Midtown and Lower Manhattan include 3,300 commerical parking signs and 3,000 other signs for nighttime and weekend parking for the general public, hotel and taxi stands, street cleaning and no standing areas.”
New Design
Old Design
[via Pentagram and NYC.gov]