Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert

Brian Russell

Exam expectations

Issues associated with designers are regularly tested in the written paper. You should be able to describe the work of Richard “Jock” Kinneir and Margaret Calvert who are famous for designing many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom. Their system has become a model for modern road signage

Jock Kinneir• Richard 'Jock' Kinneir was born in Hampshire in 1917• He was a typographer and graphic designer who started his own consultancy in 1956

and eventually named this Kinneir Calvert Associates

Margaret Calvert

• Margaret Calvert was born in South Africa in 1936• She studied at the Chelsea School of Art where

her tutor, Jock Kinneir asked her to assist on a signage project for Gatwick Airport

Road signage

• This road sign was typical throughout the country in the early part of the 1900s

• Whilst many of these can still be seen in rural areas they are no longer in use

Kinneir and Calvert

• The Ministry of Transport appointed Kinneir to review the signage used on UK roads and together with Calvert they devised a code of shapes and colours which we all take for granted nowadays

• Compare these to the earlier signs

Typeface

• Kinneir and Calvert developed a new typeface (font), based on Akzidenz Grotesk.

• This typeface was later named Transport. • It was first used for the Preston By-pass in 1958.

Upper or lower case?

• At speed the visual shape of a word in mixed case lettering helps its recognition: “Birmingham” is more swiftly absorbed than “BIRMINGHAM”, for instance.

• This was one of the deciding factors in favour of Kinneir’s proposal along with the thought that this was a more European look

Transport used for motorways

• This new typeface (or font as we now call them) was designed to be easier to read at speed

• They experimented with different colour combinations adopting white on a blue background for motorways

Transport used on major roads

• Kinneir and Calvert decided on white and yellow on a dark green background for the major roads

• Once again, these decisions were based upon being able to easily read at speed

Local roads

• Black on a white background was used for local routes

• These often include a host of local information and are easy to read at lower speeds

Calvert• Using the European standard shapes for warnings, Calvert designed

the pictorial instructions for road users• She developed different designs for eight different categories such as

warnings, directions information etc.

Pictograms

• These clear symbols were well drawn and easy to understand

• The little girl shown on the “Look Out, Children Crossing” sign was in fact based upon a photograph of herself as a child

• The cow featured in the farm animals warning sign was based on Patience, a cow on her relatives' Warwickshire farm.

Pictograms

• Calvert was also responsible for the much laughed over men at work sign.

• It has long been remarked upon that the man digging actually seems to be struggling with an umbrella

• Calvert wishes she had made the shovel more shovel-like.

Innovation

• Today it is difficult to imagine how revolutionary Kinneir and Calvert's system of road signage was.

• The branched pointed line to indicate a junction from a drivers view was very innovative in its day

• While it may have been tweaked here and there, their system has never been bettered

Cars which read signs

• There is a proposal that the UK should adopt the European road signs.

• The reason for the change is that new cars will feature a camera that scans the road ahead for signs, taking into account the shape, colours and fonts in order to display the road sign on your dashboard.

Cars which read signs

• Some of today’s cars already have this technology however if we adopted the standard European road signs a lot more vehicles would be able to have it as it would be much easier to develop a system which is reliable.

Calvert font

• Margaret Calvert went on to develop other fonts, another famous one called Calvert

• Based on letters originally drawn for the signage system of the Tyne and Wear Metro system in Newcastle it is a clean modern style.

Conclusions

• When Margaret Calvert began her career, graphic design didn’t exist as a profession.

• Six decades later, her work is all around us – from the signs on Britain’s roads to the website for the UK government where she acted as advisor to designer Ben Terrett

• British road signage is as fresh and effective now as it was when the first sign went up.

Conclusions

• Jock Kinneir went onto teach at the Royal College of Art, and was head of the graphic design department for a while.

• Kinneir was quoted as saying "The key is not noticing it. When you are designing a typeface for signage, you know you have done well when no-one comments on it.“

• He died in 1994