Signs of January

Signs seen this month.

Full marks to Gatwick Airport for these large 'print' flight information displays. You can see them from a long way away, and if your sight's not too good you can get close enough to read them.

I stared at this sign in the back of a Dublin taxi. If I'm going to the airport I'm in the taxi, am I not? To be sure.

The words clear up a mystery that's been in the air on this blog since I posted this one. 

I don't know why they need a warning sign. It's obvious that if you let go to scratch your arse, you're going to drop the box.

This was on a train, and the magnets stop the lid dropping down. But I'm curious about the risk analysis that led to this sign. 

Legal information design

As distinct from the illegal sort...

This post is to plug a conference we've organized on the topic of Clear Legal Information (the title we settled on). It's on 9 April, in London, following on from the Information Design Association conference.

Tickets are still available (not surprising as I put them on sale about an hour ago).

Mind you, if I ruled the world some kinds of information design would be illegal.

Ageing boomers

A few weeks ago I posted a moan about ageist ads on Facebook. Then I posted about some instructions I couldn't understand. 


Now I get an email from the University of Cambridge Engineering Department advertising courses on inclusive design. As they put it, "Poorly considered design affects millions of people in the UK and worldwide – in particular, the ageing, baby-boomer generation – who have difficulty using everyday products and services, from mobile phones and food packaging to telephone banking" 


Ah, I get it now. For years, we baby boomers, born in the years after the war, were the rock and roll generation, the hippies who broke the mould. I think we were probably the generation who developed personal computers and the internet. But now we're hitting our sixties, we are old people 'who have difficulty using everyday products and services'. 


Sorry, Clas Ohlson, it isn't you, it's me. I will ask the next young person who comes to our house to programme that timer for me.

If you want to know more about that Cambridge department (they are very good), the link is www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com