The Five Man Electrical Band hit the nail on the head with their song: Signs. Released back in 1971 and still loved today. One of my favourite songs and perhaps the reason why I’ve never really appreciated the traditional sign. I feel like if you don’t want me to do something you’ve got to make a stronger statement than simply posting a boring, badly designed, poorly executed sign.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign

Municipalities are the worst at this (think development proposals). They post generic, boring, highly ignorable (is that a word?) signs all over the place which most people ignore. That’s why I came up with the idea for this campaign with the Leslieville BIA. We needed something more engaging to help spark conversations, to get people to react, and of course to get more attention. Not only did this drive traffic to the businesses of Leslieville it also received media attention and shone a brighter light on Leslieville during a difficult time for our businesses (TTC construction).

Getting creative with signage can help businesses thrive during difficult times but it can also save lives. Check out these two warning signs. Which one would you pay more attention to and keep thinking about long after you’ve passed the danger zone? Pretty easy to answer that isn’t it?

It’s all about modifying human behaviour and habits. You can’t do that until you create an emotional response and you can only create an emotional response by communicating with someone like a human being. Traditional signage might as well be someone standing in your periphery and screaming at you. One tends to tune that out after a while.

Which one of the Signs below would get you to pay attention to your littering habits? Notice one that’s out of place? This is (was) an awesome campaign by the City of Toronto (Yay Toronto!). Not only did it get people to pay attention to their littering habits, it gave global attention to a global problem. We all know littering is bad but people do it anyway. Posting a “No Littering” sign is completely useless but THIS epic campaign was hard to ignore.

Thanks to people like Dave Meslin and other local creatives, we’re seeing much more effective signage by being creative. If tax dollars are going to be spent on signage, let’s make sure it’s money well spent and put some focus into beautifully designed engaging content to actually help create the change you’re seeking.

Make sense?

Share: