National Park Service Sign Manual (Revised January 1988)
The Park Service's engineering manual for road and trail signs, revised in January 1988 to replace the 1978 Sign System Specifications.
What it is
The Park Service's engineering manual for road and trail signs, revised in January 1988 to replace the 1978 Sign System Specifications. It is the official NPS supplement to the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, with exceptions agreed with the Federal Highway Administration, chiefly brown backgrounds for guide signs and Modified Clarendon lettering. Seven chapters run from planning to procurement. Planning starts from seven questions, the first being 'What does the visitor need to know?', and five tests: uniformity, design, placement, operation and maintenance. Each park keeps a sign plan and an inventory, inspected every year by day and by night. Letter size follows speed, from 9-inch capitals at 50 to 55 mph down to 1-inch letters on footpaths, and a road sign carries at most eight words. Later chapters cover materials, testing, ordering through UNICOR, and a sample plan for Pipestone National Monument.
Why read it now
Read it for the reading-time arithmetic, which applies to every billboard, shopfront and mall directory. The manual sets letter height by how fast the reader moves and how far away they are, and caps a road sign at eight words and four per message; outdoor advertisers still work to a similar rule of about seven words. Its pedestrian chart implies roughly 2 to 2.5 cm of capital height for every 10 metres of reading distance, a quick check for any sign. The seven planning questions make a better creative brief than many agency templates, and testing the answers on people not involved with the sign is pre-testing before the term was common. The warning that a standard sign in the wrong place breeds disrespect for all signs applies to repeated promotional banners too. Dated: imperial units, plywood and procurement detail, male pronouns, and Modified Clarendon itself, which the Park Service later replaced with a face drawn for its signs. Use: audit your branch signage and roadside ads against the word cap and the letter-size ratio, and check the Arabic line from the same distance.
Passages worth keeping
Park roads are for leisurely driving only. If you are in a hurry, you might do well to take another route now, and come back when you have more time.
طرق المتنزهات للاستمتاع لا للعجلة، ومن كان مستعجلًا فليسلك طريقًا آخر ويعود حين يتسع وقته، ومن هذا المبدأ تنبع قلة اللافتات وهدوؤها.
What does the visitor need to know?
السؤال الأول قبل أي لافتة هو ما يحتاجه الزائر من معلومات، لا ما تريد الجهة أن تقوله.
Before proceeding with a sign, the answers to the above questions should be tested on several people not immediately concerned with the particular sign under consideration.
قبل صنع اللافتة اعرض إجاباتك على أشخاص لا علاقة لهم بها، فهم أقرب إلى الزائر الحقيقي من فريق العمل.
A standard uniform device used where it is not appropriate is as objectionable as a nonstandard device; in fact, this may be worse because misuse breeds disrespect of all devices.
اللافتة الموحدة في غير موضعها ضارة مثل اللافتة الشاذة أو أشد، لأن سوء الاستعمال يعلّم الناس تجاهل كل اللافتات.
Maximum of eight (8) words per sign.
لافتة الطريق لا تتحمل أكثر من 8 كلمات، لأن السائق لا يملك إلا ثواني قليلة لقراءتها.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original npshistory.com
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.