Background: Rice Creative was invited to participate in an initiative from NB Studio London, Spring Chicken and Michael Wolff. Together they launched a campaign to redesign the well known ‘elderly people’ road sign. The current sign is a depressing silhouette of a stooping elderly couple with a walking stick. NB challenged the design community to reimagine it, with a more positive spin. Over 200 designs were submitted from artists, illustrators and designers ranging from Milton Glaser to Oliviero Toscani. The story was covered by media outlets including the Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Telegraph, Independent and the Metro. The local government took an interest and meetings with representatives from the Department for Transport took place.

 

Solution: Challenged by the brief, our studio surmised that the sign should only be an indication for drivers to yield, and look for slow moving entities which may be crossing the road. We found that the humble penguin would serve as a positive representation of one that takes his or her time. The elderly may be criticised for moving at a slow pace, but penguins would not, because that is just the way penguins are. As a project for Great Britan, only one graphic penguin came to our minds, the one designed by Jan Tschichold in 1946 for penguin books, (and subsequent 2003 fine-tuning by Pentagram‘s Angus Hyland.) It was an honour for us to participate in a project for good, among such lengenday talents.

 

Please see more at creativecourage.co.uk