Design for disaster
I do approve with Eugene Bügleichenhaus’ phenomenal typographic research project Euroface. It has been long since such a systematic approach was taken out on information design for the public need. After all, we want to know how to get from A to B, and the designer should take the lead in this process. Too many designers have forgotten about this rather modest goal and instead misused the spaces of design as a stage for their own ‘art’. We can be sure that the last few decades of this century have been erroneously wasted to serve creativity instead of function.
If creativity itself would be removed from the human brain, of course there would be no life. But creativity should be tamed, guided, and repressed. This may sound rather blunt, but far too much has been invested in the myths, and far too less in the realities of well-conceived information design. It is a sign of hope, that now, a complete and systematic study has been devoted to the legibility of road type, which has resulted in this so-called Euroface typeface.
What Bügleichenhaus seems to have overlooked however are circumstances of legibility in situations of terror and catastrophe. In case of a typhoon, firestorm or thermonuclear disaster, it is extremely important to know where to go. In 1986, the legibility of road signs in the Chernobyl area in the former Soviet Union was extremely poor; we now know at what cost. When facing the possibility of instant death, the user does not want to read but wants to know.
A new typeface system for the European highways should be absolutely proof to such hazardous occurrances, yet the very thought of disaster has not come to the minds of its researchers, for they think themselves safe from harm in economic growth and welfare.
Yet, the atrocities of war and the catastrophies of nature are never far away. When, due to the rising of the oceans, large parts of Europe will be flooded within the next 50 years, it will be virtually impossible to get from A to B by road. The new sign system should provide additional routing over water. If, in an unexpected tour-de-force, the North and South pole will switch sides, Europe will instantaneously obtain the climate of South America. Will Euroface still be comprehensive under these tropical reading conditions? Finally, if a vast meteorite were to hit Earth, we will all be thrown back into the Ice Age. It is of urgent importance that under such circumstances, possibly involving the absence of sunlight, Euroface road signs will remain legible, so that accurate evacuation can take place.
I am nevertheless convinced that prof. Bügleichenhaus and his team will succeed in meeting these new and tough criteria. It is with certainty that I can say that when these factors will be implemented, we are about to witness the emergence of a project of true typographic magnitude.

prof. dr. Ernst Krefeld Hansen
krefeldhansen@typonorm.ch
associate professor of industrial design, El Hacienda University of Applied Science, Puerto Rico
president, TYPONORM
(International Association for Normalized Typography)

Read other expert's responses:
David Berlow
dr. Rüdiger Metzker
prof. dr. Ernst Krefeld Hansen
Gerard Unger
Gert Dumbar