You’ve definitely seen Public Notice signs slapped up around your city or town, but you’d be forgiven if you’ve never really looked at them. Often found taped to signposts or pasted on the sides of buildings, these text-heavy, government-issued signs convey important information about planning or zoning–to announce when a tree will be removed, for example, or a public hearing on a property. They tend to do it verbosely, and without a lot of style. As creative director Blake Howard puts it, they’re like the spam mail of city way-finding—most people just glaze over them.
In Atlanta, where Howard’s branding firm Matchstic is based, that recently changed. Earlier this year, the firm was approached by Commissioner Tim Keane of the Atlanta Department of City Planning, which handles public notices, to reassess the visual language of the department itself. Matchstic gave the department its new name (before, it was the “Department of Planning and Community Development”) and a new look, including clean typography, colorful applications, and more modernized seal. One of the first applications of the rebrand, which launches today? A series of sharply designed Public Notice signs.
They summed up the approach with a phrase that drove all of the visual messaging: “To Be Clear Is To Be Kind.” In other words, says Howard, “If we want to be kind to the public we serve, we need to be clear.”
For example, if the notice is alerting citizens that a tree will be removed, that statement is in bold and centered so that if nothing else, that message gets conveyed. The details are in smaller type below and to the side. An elongated, bolded “T” for tree—very much in the Swiss Style—categorizes the signs by topic so you can read each at a glance. Others have a “B” for bike share station or “V” for variance.
Having an outside designer work with government departments to overhaul their visual communications system is not a new idea. In the ’70s, Nixon of all people provided support for some of the most prominent designers of the day to create identity systems for federal government agencies.
“I think that other departments or government groups could realize the value of considering the department as a brand,” says Howard. “Like consumer-facing entities, there is value in having a good reputation. The benefit to working with outside designers is that you get that a fresh perspective, and a desire for it to be more intuitive and human-focused.”