ICM - Leeds Design Agency

The Exit sign is a piece of signage you see in every building. A running man on a green background. It’s a pictogram, and it’s green. The sign’s wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don’t speak the local language. And the green color, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over. Designed by Yukio Ota and adopted for international use in 1985. This take on the exit sign goes by the informal name “the running man,” and looks like this.

Below is a variation

So why in America is their sign different? At first glance it looks like an unimpeachable bit of sign design. The contrast between the letters and the background renders it highly legible, the illumination stresses the importance of the message, and the colour is the same as most fire-safety devices. But why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? and in language that not everybody understands.

This battle over the exit sign has been brewing for 25 years now, and the green guy is slowly making inroads in America. But to understand whether he should triumph, we must understand America’s skepticism toward pictograms and symbols, which have long been more popular in the rest of the world than they are there.

American signs tend to be wordy because in most America cities it’s safe to assume people speak English. As a result, the sign systems have typically communicated in text. Europe, by contrast, developed symbolic road signs as early as 1968. On a continent where you can’t drive for more than a few hours before encountering a new language, the pictorial approach made sense.

Over the next few decades, however, designers around the world began to use graphical symbols with increasing frequency, especially in busy pedestrian environments where speakers of multiple languages were likely to congregate: airports, train stations, and—funnily enough—the Olympics. For the Mexico City Games in 1968, the American designer Lance Wyman introduced a system of pictograms so comprehensive the tickets were nearly textless. In the late ’60s, British airports introduced a set of pictograms, some of which are still in use.

When pictograms have proved so successful at airports etc it’s hard to belive that anyone would want any confusion on something as important as a safety sign. In recent years, more green “EXIT” signs have gone up around America, although red ones still predominate. In 2006, New York City changed its fire code to mandate that high-rises include the pictogram on fire doors on each floor. So sure enough, the running man can make his green esca…

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A while ago I wrote a blog about Aicher’s pictogram work for Munich 72, I thought I’d follow it up with another classic year for Olympic graphic design which was Mexico 68, the logo was created by US designer Lance Wyman. His concept was radical – it hinted at Op Pop while embracing the vernacular visual culture of the host city – and, like London 2012, it was essentially a graphic stamp, rather than a traditional image with accompanying city name, rings and year.

Lance had this to say about the London 2012 design.
“My gut feeling though is to give the logo a chance, he continues. “It has a recognizable, brash character and might offer an open book of application possibilities that will keep it fresh into 2012.

“I remember, in the early stages of designing of the Mexico Olympic program, a Swiss journalist commented that the Mexico 68 logo didn’t work because it wasn’t very legible. It really frightened me but I knew what we had in mind and stuck with it.”

One of the main issues when designing the Mexico 68 logo, tickets and information boards was Language. Problems associated with guiding and informing participants and the general public were minimized through the use of concise Olympic symbology.

Below is a ticket from Mexico 68 and this is a brilliant example of how pictograms can replace words and be understood by all. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ticket with so few words on.

The simple graphical style was put to good use on a variety of other applications.

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Last night Flux showed the animated short “Logorama” in their screening lineup at the Hammer museum in L.A. Why is this worthy of a blog?

Logorama is an Oscar-nominated short film by François Alaux and Herve de Crecy and presents us with an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks. The characters within it are all composed of corporate logo art, for example there’s a “Pringles” man, and even a villainous Ronald McDonald. Unsurprisingly all of the brands have been used without permission.

Jonathan Wells of Flux tells us,
“The short was created by directors within H5, a French graphic studio renowned for its CD front covers (Superdiscount, Air, Demon…) and artistic direction (Dior, Cartier, YSL…). Members François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain directed many music videos (Alex Gopher, Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Röyksopp…), and are regularly invited to exhibitions for their artistic talents (2007 Nuit Blanche, Beaubourg, MoMA). Logorama is their first short film, and premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Kodak Short Film Discovery Prize at the 48th Critics’ Week. The short was 4 years in the making, and features a voice cameo by filmmaker David Fincher as the Pringles man”.

Check out a preview here Logorama...

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