When was jock kinneir born

Subsequently, the British government formed the Worboys Committee. Sir Walter Worboys was designated the chairman of the committee who was assigned the task of reviewing the entire network of road signs throughout Britain.

Their firm had been renamed as Kinneir Calvert and Associates by the time the review committee produced the report and put it into effect. Calvert also created easy-to-understand pictograms based on pre-existing European warning signs.

These pictorial instructions for road users included the signs for crossing of livestock animals that was modeled after Patience and schoolchildren nearby was depicted through a girl leading a boy by hand. In addition to designing road sign system, Calvert has also developed commercial fonts for Monotype.

In , for the Tyne and Wear Metro system, she designed a font after her own name. UK website. The characters of both weights were given notional tile outlines to facilitate to their correct spacing.

Whilst these outlines were equivalent to the body of traditional letterpress type, alternative tile widths were prescribed for particular combinations of letters, what we would today call kerning, to improve appearance and readability. It is not always appreciated that the size of lettering used on traffic signs varies greatly depending upon the speed of traffic and how much information is shown. Other elements of the sign need to be scaled accordingly, and Kinneir and Calvert deserve as much credit for their system of spacing and layout that retains this proportionality as for the fonts themselves.

They based their design rules upon the width of the stroke of the capital I in the Transport Medium font — a measure that would scale with the size of lettering. Further experiments were undertaken: trial installations in the Stamford and Biggleswade areas, and tests at Benson Airfield in Oxfordshire involved signs mounted on cars driven towards static observers, to simulate the need to understand signs whilst on the move and to determine reading distances for different options.

The Committee decided to adopt the continental style of using symbols rather than words on the road signs, and Calvert drew most of the pictograms in the friendly, curvaceous style of Transport. Many of her illustrations were inspired by aspects of her own life. Eager to make the school children crossing sign more accessible, she replaced the image of a boy in a school cap leading a little girl, with one of a girl — modelled on a photograph of herself as a child — with a younger boy.

Kinneir and Calvert continued to propose refinements to their work. In late a revised version of Transport was produced, with the lower-case letters enlarged relative to the capitals. Tests by the Road Research Laboratory showed the improvement in readability to be marginal, so this adaptation was dropped. The road signs proved as efficient and popular as their motorway signage and elements of their design have been used in countless other countries.

Kinneir and Calvert went on to complete other public sector design projects. The Rail Alphabet typeface they designed for British Rail was part of the ambitious identity programme that included cutlery by the metalware designer David Mellor and the rail symbol created by Gerald Barney of the Design Research Unit.

Both Kinneir and Calvert taught at the Royal College of Art, where each had a stint as head of the graphic design department. Jock Kinneir died in , but his work has remained a lasting tribute to him. It adapted well to brown background signing for tourist attractions in the s, but then suffered somewhat from onwards with the introduction of large coloured panels — signs within signs. However, it is an unfortunate by-product of this digitisation process that some symbols have lost their crispness and distinct characteristics due to repeated retracing over the years.

It is a need which has bred a sub-division of graphic design with more influence on the appearance of our surroundings than any other. Thank you to Simon Morgan, voluntary chair of the Institute of Highway Engineers traffic signs panel. Kinneir starts four years of study at the Chelsea School of Art in London where he specialises in engraving.

Calvert moves with her family from South Africa to Britain. Login Cancel. Margaret Calvert Added by admin. Margaret Vivienne Calvert, OBE born is a British typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Jock Kinneir, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom, as well as the Transport font used on road signs, the Rail Alphabet font used on the British railway system, and an early version of the signs used in airports.

UK website in the United Kingdom. If you wish to download it, please recommend it to your friends in any social system. Share buttons are a little bit lower. Thank you! Published by Amice Tucker Modified over 6 years ago. Their system has become a model for modern road signage.

This typeface was later named Transport. It was first used for the Preston By-pass in It has long been remarked upon that the man digging actually seems to be struggling with an umbrella Calvert wishes she had made the shovel more shovel-like.

The branched pointed line to indicate a junction from a drivers view was very innovative in its day While it may have been tweaked here and there, their system has never been bettered.