No one likes paying parking tickets or having their car towed away. And designer Nikki Sylianteng had her share of tickets before she decided to do something about it. So she has redesigned the confusing parking signs that result in frustration for so many drivers.
To make things absolutely clear for anyone, she replaced the words and the symbols with a timetable showing what days of the week and what times that parking was or was not available. If the time is green, you are good to go park. If it is red, better keep looking for a spot. The sections when parking is allowed also lets you know for how long you can park, one hour or two hours, for example.
"My strategy was to visualize the blocks of time when parking is allowed and not allowed. I kept everything else the same -- the colors and the form factor -- as my intention with this redesign is to show how big a difference a thoughtful, though conservative and low budget, approach can make in terms of time and stress saved for the driver," Sylianteng stated on her site.
The design went through a few iterations. Recently, Sylianteng added a subtle crosshatching to the red sections so that those who are colorblind can still differentiate between times you can park and those when you can't park. And she also added another indicator below the times when you can park that say whether if you have to pay or if it is free for you to park your car.
She has even posted some prototypes in New York City's Brooklyn and Manhattan boroughs, below the actual signs. She even left room for people to provide feedback.
"This is awesome. The mayor should hire you," One commenter wrote.
This will likely remain a designer's pet project though, as the extra cost to replace all the signs in a large city like Los Angeles or New York City would likely prevent such a measure from happening. The cynical may also add that confusing signs result in extra revenue to the city from parking tickets and that reason alone may prevent any adoption of better parking signs.
