Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

When they try to teach us about the wonderful world of semiotics at the university they always use road signs as examples. Apparently signs are good to use as examples of… signs (I should stay away from puns).

In Europe I'm used to seeing many iconic signs on road signs. Like the pictogram of a bike in the bike path sign to the left. The arrow below the pictogram is not iconic but symbolic (arbitraty, based on a convention), but it's such a well defined symbol in all of the world that cultural differences don't change anything.

I hadn't really spent much time thinking about road signs until I went to the USA last summer. Here I rarely saw pictograms used on road signs instead everything was written out in English (language being a symbolic sign).

After pondering the differences for five minutes I came to the conclusion that using symbolic signs in Europe would be a really bad idea. There are so many different cultures (and thus languages) packed into a small relatively small area. You can never be sure that the person who has to understand the road sign will be able to decipher an arbitrary code — especially not one so complex as the local language.

Iconic signs are much better. They are not completely culturally independent, but they are more independent. As an added bonus icons are much simpler signs and thus they are faster to interpret than complex symbols (like a sentence). This is a Good Thing™ when you are driving down the highway.

Walking around campus I did find some signs that combine icons with language. This also gives me a chance to show a (very) small glimpse of what the outside of Aalborg University looks like.

The first is the red sign above. The car and motorbike icons along with the common symbolic sign of them having a line through is easy to decipher no matter where you come from: “No motor vehicles beyond this point.” The sentence below can't be understood unless you actually know Danish (or a related language). In this case we're lucky because the language below isn't needed to keep yourself within the law. It reads “Service- and handicap driving allowed”. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to break out the wheelchair before you have to.

Generally I think that's a good way to do complex signs. Do the really important signs with icons and use language only if you have to and not for information that's vital.

The second sign (the blue one of the left) does the same thing. The man and child on the left divided from the bike on the right shows you that this is a divided pedestrian- and bike path. Below you can read “Roller skating on the bike path allowed”. Denmark's cracked out laws classify roller skaters as pedestrians and thus they usually belong on the pedestrian path. If you're not able to read the text below the sign you can't break the law anyway. Roller skaters are allowed on both the bike path and the pedestrian path.

What annoys my about this sign is something else. The pedestrians are marked on the left half of the sign, but the pedestrian path is actually located to the right. This is ilogical and messes up the iconic sign. They should have two versions of this road sign to cover all situations.

Next week: More exciting road signs from Denmark! Or maybe not.