These new street signs appear in Kensington, a tony subdivision of the town (or village; I’m too lazy to determine) of Great Neck, which is east of the undefined border of Queens and Nassau County, near Forgotten NY headquarters on Little Neck Parkway.
I’m showing them since to me they’re an example of how to do new street signs right. Over the past decade the federal government became convinced that upper and lowercase street signs were more legible than ALL CAPS on street signs, and municipalities have been switching to that style in various speeds. At the same time, traditional Highway Gothic was replaced with the weak-tea Clearview, which lacks the personality and muscle of HG. Thankfully, the feds agreed and okayed a move back to HG, but maintaining upper and lowercase.
In NYC (the five boroughs) the conversion has been done in 50 ways of wrong, with tiny signs with upper and lower case letters in Highway Gothic Condensed that must be completely illegible from a certain distance.
Here in Kensington, the conversion was done right —large lettering in Highway Gothic Regular, filling the sign and readable from a block away or longer. I can see the “hump” being used for the cross street, just as it was in decades past.
NYC, though, will continue to get crappy signs when they’re replaced at all — sun bleached signs tend to remain in place longer.
One of my dream jobs is in the NYC Department of transportation sign shop — the changes I’d make…
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11/30/18