I often think Cleveland needs an angel to touch each one of us, to celebrate the city of Cleveland in a refreshed image,
in a new perspective. To transform our ideals of daily living , make each day far more important, to hold and hug each day with renewed spirit. To
. To come together as one in growing in our hearts, souls, minds, and beliefs that we can grow stronger as one.
New freeway signs in Northeast Ohio to be more readable
Posted by
Laura Johnston October 12, 2008 17:45PM
Categories:
Real Time News,
TrafficClick here to view the full-size graphic. (PDF)They're small changes -- taller lower-case letters; less-scrunched spaces inside a's and e's; a tiny tail on the l, to distinguish it from an i.
You'll barely notice.
But when a new type of lettering debuts on freeway signs here next year, you'll be able to read it from farther away, giving you at least two seconds more to react -- or so sign designers hope.
The new typeface, Clearview, improves readability 20 percent over traditional highway lettering, said Don Meeker, an environmental graphic designer who set out in 1991 to declutter American road signs. Thirteen years later, Clearview was approved for use by the Federal Highway Administration.
Next fall, the font will appear in Northeast Ohio as part of construction projects on Interstates 71, 90, 490 and 480. Already, the lettering appears on about 40 percent of the signs sold by Arkansas-based Interstate SignWays.
"It's fascinating what seems to be a minor change has such a dramatic impact," Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Varner said. "If you take an 'r' and an 'r' and put them side by side, there's not a lot of difference. But . . . it is a clearer view."
The new font is an evolution of the old Highway Gothic typeface, which was created in 1949 by a traffic engineer who simply enlarged a mechanical lettering template, Meeker said. It was never tested for readability but was formalized in 1959 with the advent of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System.
Ever since, Highway Gothic has characterized the American landscape, in all-capital letters for words like "north," "right" and "exit" and mixed-case for destination names like Cleveland.
"They never thought about 'Does this typeface work?' at all," Meeker said. "We're trying to design something better than something that was never designed."
Meeker improved night driving, too, especially for the senior citizens who make up 15 percent of U.S. drivers.
At night the problem is overglow, a haze caused by headlights hitting the reflective sign material, blurring letters. The solution, the Federal Highway Administration suggested in 1994, was to make letters 20 percent bigger. But that would cost billions of dollars in new structures and super-sized signs.
Meeker tried to solve the problem in his quest for a clearer sign system.
Working with the Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute at Pennsylvania State University, Meeker first tried existing European types. But after posting 40 mock-ups in an array of letter sizes and thicknesses and in upper and lower cases, he realized he would have to create something new. He started with the familiar Highway Gothic, carving and stretching letter shapes to make them easier to read.
"Clearview is sort of Highway Gothic on a diet," said Martin Pietrucha, interim director of the institute. Sort of like a friend with a new haircut: You notice something looks different.
To refine the font, Meeker partnered with Brooklyn typeface designer James Montalbano, who drew an entire font family by computer.
The duo kept the same stroke width of the letters but tapered it in spots. They opened up the inside spaces in letters like "s," "p," "a," "c" and "e." And after an epiphany in 2001, they increased the height of lower-case letters, bringing the characters closer to the height of the upper case.
"It looks more open and more airy, so letter forms are more distinct," Montalbano said.
While capital letters appear as one big block, mixing upper and lower cases gives words distinctive patterns.
You recognize highway destination and road names more than you actually read them, Montalbano said. When you search for a certain word, your brain can distinguish its length, plus noticeable letters, such as the tail of a lower-case g or y, or the stick of an h or l or t.
Aha! your brain says -- deciphering the shape of "Cleveland," for example, instead of "Akron."
Clearview can be deciphered much sooner than Highway Gothic, according to research at the Pennsylvania institute and the Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.
The difference surprised even Meeker and Montalbano, who in 2002 printed highway signs in Highway Gothic and Clearview, put them up on a test track at Penn State and walked back 500 feet.
At that distance, Highway Gothic letters began to break up, Montalbano said. But they walked back an additional 250 feet before Clearview became hard to read.
"It's a seamless upgrade, but something is a whole lot better," Meeker said. "You don't realize you're seeing at a significantly longer distance because it's sharper."
Montalbano and Meeker now want to create a better system for highway signs, to clean up the muddle of fonts and colors and sizes, to make signs clearer and more uniform. So together, they have researched sign layouts and developed a grid system to place information effectively.
Eventually, perhaps, Clearview could spell out information at every intersection in America.
For now, though, the partners are selling the right to use Clearview, about $800 for one computer license, Montalbano said.
Companies, such as AT&T, are using the font. And it's popping up all over the United States, replacing Highway Gothic signs (each at several thousand dollars) as they wear out or their information changes.
Maybe you noticed. Maybe you could finally read the signs. Posted by PoorRichard2 on
10/12/08 at 7:52PMSeveral thousand dollars each!! Give the money to a food bank. Child immunization or heath/dental care. With all the real needs out there, this is what our government does with our tax dollars???? Metro Hospital is going broke, but this is what these morons think we need? A complete waste of tax dollars. This is exactly why I will never vote for another tax increase. The government spends our money like it was theirs.
Under the section titled "Web Sites of Interest" a link is given to the inventor of the traffic light, Mr. Garrett Morgan. Viewers might also be interested in a write-up by the Ohio Motorists Association (Ohio Motorist, Vol 85, No 1, February, 1993, pg 4). Because of its human interest the article will be quoted in its entirety. It was published in the Editor's Corner, titled "Cleveland's Edison: Garrett Morgan, traffic light inventor." The article is as follows:
