Direction of travel

Some trains on the Hong Kong metro have diagrams like this: the remaining stations on your journey light up (in this case, Mong Kok, Prince Edward and Sham Shui Po) and one set of directional arrows ripple round to show you the direction of travel. There is also a light (not in this photo) to tell you which side the doors will open at the next station. Nice one. 

iPhoto's new goddess recognition feature

iPhoto likes to spot faces, and put a name to them. So I need to tell it this is the Goddess of Mercy from the temple at Repulse Bay, Hong Kong.

Step forward

You see this sign quite a lot in China, but it's nothing to do with the 5 year plan. At least you see it a lot if you are male, because it's found on urinals.

Showing and saying

On our recent visit to China, I kept noticing Chinese characters that seem to depict what they say. I think I'm right in saying that 'entrance' is written using characters that both look like and mean 'person' and 'gate' (literally, 'mouth', I was told).

But apparently it's just coincidence that the first character below looks like a toilet...

Here's the corresponding icon for Exit. Almost a new ideogram in itself.

You know where you are on the Great Wall of China

And some things you can't do in Beijing

More things you can't do in Hong Kong

Things you can't do in Hong Kong

Signs of New York

Just back from a great trip to New York, with a few signs to share.

 Nice and direct.

 Strangely specific icons on the way in the 9/11 memorial. Is that a flick knife? Are other kinds OK?

 I like their thinking - putting the 'No Dogs' sign on a lamp post. But it's a little high up for them to read.

 OK! OK! OK!

Not sure why I find this funny, but I do.

Film warnings I'd like to see

I don't think I've seen this kind of warning before. It's on a poster for the film Mama. Handy, because I'm not keen on ghost films. Perhaps we could also have warnings for wrong-font-for-period, the pretty girl dies, Steven Fry.

Extreme Su Doku

So fiendish I couldn't begin to solve it. The Times iPad edition strikes again.

When editors get cross

I can't remember seeing anything quite like this page from the Charity Commission document Charities and Public Benefit: The Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit. (This link will presumably die, when the guidance is revised).

What's behind this is that private schools don't like the way the Charity Commission interpreted the Charities Act 2006, threatening their charitable status. For example, the Charity Commission say:

"Where benefit is to a section of the public, the opportunity to benefit must not be unreasonably restricted
 • by geographical or other restrictions
 or
• by ability to pay any fees charged"

In 2011 the Charity Commission lost a court case, and are, or should be, revising the guidelines. But pending an appeal, they have continued to publish the disputed text, but crossed out.
Here's a BBC report of the case.

Jacques Derrida uses crossed out words to signify that they don't quite express what he means. Perhaps we could all adopt the technique.

"Dear Granny, Thanks for the lovely socks. They are just what I wanted."
"Dear Valued Customer".

Ronald Shakespear

Thanks to Unit Editions for publishing a great series of books on the designers who influenced my generation. Herb Lubalin and Ken Garland were given the treatment most recently, and others are in the pipeline.

And thanks to them for highlighting the work of the Argentine designer and photographer Ronald Shakespear, whose name I knew, but not his work. Have a look at the interviews on their website. He comes across as a lovely guy in the interview and also in the work. Drawn as always to the information design part of anyone's oeuvre, I particularly love this Buenos Aires taxi sign from 1971.

In the interview Ronald quotes some nice advice given by Milton Glaser when he visited his students: 'Learn all what you can from your teachers now and when you cross the street, please forget it all'

Unit Editions is a collaboration between Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy.

A better class of lost and found

As you'd expect, you get a better class of lost and found notices in a leading art school. This from the Royal College of Art notice board.