Normative Signs: The Poetry of "Ought"

Here’s a ‘no parking’ sign with attitude.

(Thanks to Peter Jarowski for sending the picture, which was taken in downtown Ottawa.)

You get some understanding of why the sign is so emphatic when you see it in context: it is posted above a “siamese” connection, a place where firefighters can connect a hose to pump water into a burning building’s sprinkler system.

Here’s yet another example of what I lovingly refer to as a ‘normatively rich environment,’ in this case an exit door at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. As always with such environments, the first thing to note is that richness really means complexity, which means important normative messages are easy to misunderstand, or miss altogether.

Thanks to Wayne Norman yet again for the pic.

Here are a couple other things to note:

First, take a look at the red Warning sign on the right, which explains the penalty for failure to use your ID badge when exiting through this door. The “minimum” fine is $100, but that fine only “may” be imposed, or not, and in the latter case as Wayne points out the true minimum fine is $0.

Next, consider the pairing of signs at the left-hand side of the door. The top one indicates that this door leads to a “Severe weather shelter area.” Unfortunately (for most of us!) the bottom sign says that you need to input a security code prior to using the door. So, in case of tornado, I guess it sucks not to have one of those. (In fact, I suspect the code is only needed in order to avoid an alarm going off, rather than to make the door open, but the sign is at least unclear about that. And in case of tornado, that’s the last thing you need.)
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Here’s an interesting permissive sign. It’s a “Kayak Wash Area” sign, posted in the parking garage of a condo building in Victoria, British Columbia.

Thanks to Daniel Weinstock for sending this one. Daniel points out that this sign seems to imply that it’s not ok to wash kayaks anywhere else in the garage, and perhaps that in other parts of the garage one washes other things (surf boards?). Only on the west coast could such designated areas be required, or perhaps even plausible.

This sign is in a cable car in Porto, Portugal. It was sent to me by PY Néron.

Interestingly, as PY points out, the sign clearly forbids lighting matches (presumably intending indirectly to forbid smoking?) and also forbids standing/leaning against your seat. But…what’s going on in the other signs? The third sign seems to urge caution when the cable car doors are open. But is mere caution enough when the car is suspended high above the Douro river? Or is the sign just urging caution when hopping out of the car at the end of your journey? It is at least tempting to read that sign as saying, hey, we know you’ll want to open the doors mid-trip, but please do so cautiously.

This is an unusual one, mostly for the way it’s presented. It’s got a nice aesthetic, and could be mistaken for an art installation. It’s in the median, at a 2-stage crossing where a trail meets a busy road. To cross the road, you have to cross one lane to get to the sign, turn right and walk down the median, where there’s another similar sign that says “WAIT FOR GAP,” and then there’s an outlet from the median to let you cross the other lane. So the geometry of the crossing kind of emphasizes the warning.

The sign is located on Pottery Rd. in Toronto, where the DVP trail crosses.

Thanks to Scott Gavura for the photo.

Here’s the sign in context, in a photo taken from Google Streetview:

This sign on a bathroom door telling employees, in Spanish, to wash their hands before returning to work would be unremarkable except for the fact that it’s ONLY in Spanish, and posted in a hipster café with zero Hispanic employees or customers. Call it ironic regulatory compliance.

Thanks to Wayne Norman for the picture.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, and I haven’t posted the picture backwards. This is how it looks in real life — written backwards, presumably so that truck drivers looking in their rear-view mirrors can read it.

The sign is posted outside the Canadian Stage Company on Berkeley Street in Toronto. Thanks to Paul Gorbould.

I mostly like this one for the accompanying artwork.

I like the fact that they decided to illustrate just what they meant by “emergency equipment.” I also find the lonely little guy in a raft oddly charming.

The sign is on a Jetblue plane, by the way.

(Thanks to Wayne Norman for the picture.)

This one’s a head-scratcher, in that it’s a bit of a truism that illegal dumping is prohibited. By definition, it is prohibited everywhere.

I assume the intention is to acknowledge that some dumping might be permitted in this location — so you might see a bag of trash here — but that doesn’t imply that you, stranger, can dump your trash here.

(Thanks to Sheldon and Thea for this picture, which was taken in Halifax, Nova Scotia.)

This one is from Northbound Leather on Yonge St. in Toronto. It’s a nice play on the traditional “If you break it, you buy it” sign.

(Thanks to Tracy Isaacs for this photo.)