Rome welcomes you. In Comic Sans.

In the photo above you will see one of the very first signs  you will be welcomed by, as you land in Rome airport. A shabby A4 paper, straight out of some laser printer, with text poorly written both in Italian and in English, set in Comic Sans. It is a sign meant to provide straight-forward information about the proper procedure when going through passport control and it barely manages to do that.

But its design feature tells more than that: nevermind the comical suggestion to wait on the yellow line, which is of course perpendicular to the queue; above all this poorly designed sign tells the visitors that when designing for public spaces in Rome anything goes and nobody cares about proportions, readability and beauty. comicsans-welcome-to-romeThe next time I land in my hometown, I will bring this revised version and put it there (or get arrested while trying…)

rome-passport-redesigned-preview

Here it is in pdf: PASSPORT-CONTROL-ROME-outline
Note: the pictogram in the revised layout comes from a set of 50 passenger/pedestrian symbols developed by AIGA, and it is available for all to use, free of charge. Signs are available in EPS and GIF formats at: http://www.aiga.org/symbol-signs/

 

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