Signage Design

Warning Sign
'Alerting the driver to a nearby nuclear power station'


Jock Kinnier and Margaret Calvert redesigned the entire motorway signage system between 1957 and 1967, and since then it has spread throughout the world due to its popularity and ease of use.


Colour and shape are used to denote the type of sign, while simple black and white pictograms illustrate the specific nature of the sign. Warning signs are triangular with a red border, tourism signs are rectangular and use white on brown and can incorporate an arrow, motorway signs use blue while primary route signs are green, both using directional arrows and a clear sans-serif typeface, Transport.


For this task it was clear that if my design was for a British road then it would need to follow their standard, so it was just the element in the centre of the sign that I had control over. Three images came to mind immediately, the shape of the cooling towers, the radioactivity icon and the atom diagram.

Atom

A simplified atom diagram similar to this would work well as it is very universal, but the lines in the image are very thin and wouldn't be visible from a distance.

Radioactivity

This is a well known symbol denoting radioactivity, but the colours would have to be changed in the sign as they do not comply with Kinnier and Calvert's standard and could cause too much panic.

Springfield Nuclear Power Plant

Due to The Simpsons, the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is probably the most famous example of a nuclear reactor, and the two chimneys are very recognisable.

My design

My final design incorporates both the chimney shape and the radioactive warning icon set inside the standardised warning sign, which I believe fits the brief well. However, it may suggest that the nuclear reactor is hazardous when it would generally be safe, and so accompanying text declaring 'Nuclear Reactor' may have added to the sign.