UH: How did you get into signage?
JW: My first job in this field was for tourism and cultural signposting on the motorways. The architect Henri Nardin got in touch with me because he had seen my posters for the CCI. Nardin wanted to inform people about the region they were travelling through. But his programme was very complicated; he approached the problem as an architect. For example, he showed little exhibitions at the motorway service areas, but they did not work very well. They were too busy. I said I thought that the pictograms would be a good idea. Because most people would be seeing them at 130 km per hour or more, the signs had to be very simple. At first I tried combining three pictograms with a caption, but you cannot really use the two at the same time. So I separated the elements. The picture asked a question, and 300 metres further on the text gave the reply. Both the management and the public reacted very favourably.
UH: You then moved on to a study of conventional motorway signs. You were part of a small multi-disciplinary team which included the semiologist Henri-Pierre Jeudy.
JW: Jeudy helped us formulate our criticisms. It was an enriching experience. It was important to convince management in a ‘scientific’ manner. With the help of visual demonstrations, we explained to the decision-makers that there were objective optical factors that played a role in how easy it was to read the signs. Letters with open forms are legible for longer than those with closed forms, when they are seen at a distance or from an angle. If they are well spaced, the letters remain distinct, but if they are set close together, the words start to blur. And in the 1960s the fashion was for too close-spaced type. Then there has always been a battle between capitals and lowercase letters. I think lowercase letters. I think lowercase letters are more legible, because they give an individual rhythm to the words.
We also questioned the idea of having a border to a road sign. Was it really necessary? We decided that it was important at night because it defined the edge of the signs and so gave important information as to its position with respect to the side of the road. It was with this study that I really learnt about signage.
UH: You analysed and compared roadsigns from all over Europe.
JW: When we compared the different systems we found a real mess. Everyone had different codes and colours. In some countries the signs for motorways were blue and those for other main roads green. In other countries it was exactly the opposite! And it is still the case today. Or take the signs above motorway lanes which indicate that you should continue straight on. In Italy and Germany the arrows point upwards. In the Netherlands, Britain and Switzerland they point downwards. Which is right? The exit arrow is even worse. It is at an angle sloping more or less towards the top or the bottom. In France it pointed down towards the grass verge rather than to the exit sliproad. Sometimes the use of arrows on roadsigns can even become dangerous. In France at this time the message was framed by two arrows, which could be very confusing for the driver; an arrow represents a direction of travel, and here it no longer corresponded to the path the car would actually take. The fact that there were no lines on the road made the situation even more dangerous.
There was one particular stretch of road where there were frequent accidents. I spent a lot of time there to observe what was happening. Over quite a short distance there were two bridges and two exits. The bridges made it difficult to see the various signs, and people unfamiliar with the road could not figure out where the exits were.
So I suggested they signal the two exits in advance, at a distance of 2 kilometres and again at 1.5 kilometres. And I designed the signs in lower case rather than the usual capitals. Given the problem, people did not really notice the fact they were in lowercase, but the signs created a precedent and after that I was able to use lowercase everywhere.
The main problem we faced was in the application of our proposals. When I went to view the signs on site I could see that they had been made by people who were not professionals. They did not position the type accurately, they pain no attention the spacing. I even saw letters that were the wrong way round! They paid us a lot of money to come up with the ideas and then made no effort in their implementation, despite the fact that we gave them precise instructions. It was very disappointing.
UH: France seems to have fallen behind. Other countries involve graphic designers in this area.
JW: I think graphic design was a little behind the times in France. There were type foundries and poster designers. There was Cassandre. As regards typography, there was a little apart from the classic typefaces, and while they were very elegant, they were not designed for signage. On the motorways they used a bastardised form