{"id":3981,"date":"2009-01-27T18:08:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T23:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2009\/01\/27\/street-signs-of-the-times\/"},"modified":"2009-01-29T14:08:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T19:08:15","slug":"street-signs-of-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/01\/27\/street-signs-of-the-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Street signs of the times"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Toronto’s new street signs are beginning to appear at intersections<\/a> across the city.<\/p>\n

About five years ago the City of Toronto began the process of replacing all of the old, damaged street signs (photo below). In the old city of Toronto, the old-fashion signs — white background, all-cap black type, embossed black trim, and a 3-D acorn on top — were becoming too expensive to manufacture at about $300 per sign. They were replaced with a replica design<\/a> (white background, upper-lower case text, flat appearance, about $100 to produce) that looked like cardboard cutouts, in my humble opinion. Street signs in the inner suburban cities saw their blue signs<\/a> slowly replaced by the same old-timey replica designs as downtown, but with the familiar blue background.<\/p>\n

Then in 2005, the City presented a new design<\/a> by the same designers as our transit shelters. It was passed by subsequent committees and city council, with the roll-out taking up to 25 years. Over the last few weeks, the new signs began to at intersections like Harbord and Euclid (shown above and below).<\/p>\n

Here’s what I like and dislike:<\/p>\n

• LIKE<\/strong>: The upper- and lower-case letters are much easier to read at a distance (the human eye sees words as shapes, which is hard to accomplish with all-caps lettering).<\/p>\n

• LIKE<\/strong>: The blue background and white text are much easier for people to read — white blends into the background too easily.<\/p>\n

• LIKE<\/strong>: Modularity of the sign. The top piece (shown in the photo with the City of Toronto logo depicting city hall) can be a neighbourhood name or BIA logo.<\/p>\n

• DISLIKE<\/strong>: Much like our new street furniture, there is little room for neighbourhood expression besides the option to put a logo on top. It would be nice to have maybe a black background for older parts of the city, red for Chinatown, green for Forest Hill (a background colour currently used on the old-fashion signs).<\/p>\n

EDIT (Jan. 28)<\/strong>: you can see how the City will apply BIA and neighbourhood identities by downloading this PDF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I suspect the City was in a no-win situation as most everyone will have an opinion of the design, no matter how great or poor the end result produced. Perhaps the City could have held a public vote on a few designs in order for residents to feel like they took part in an important urban design decision. But that’s all wishful thinking now.<\/p>\n

I’m interested to hear the wide range of views Spacing readers will surely have on this topic.<\/p>\n

photos Lisa Logan <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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In the old city of Toronto, the old-fashion signs — white background, all-cap black type, embossed black trim, and aContinue reading “Street signs of the times”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6165,2900,851,5115,416,19,391],"class_list":["post-3981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-streetscape","tag-3-d","tag-chinatown","tag-forest-hill","tag-lisa-logan","tag-pdf","tag-toronto","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStreet signs of the times - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/01\/27\/street-signs-of-the-times\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Street signs of the times - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Toronto’s new street signs are beginning to appear at intersections across the city. 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