Unnecessary, unprofessional, useless
I am absolutely furious and puzzled. How on earth it is possible that The European Committee for Uniformity of Type Design and Type Safety dares to come up with such a useless proposition?! One of the charms of Europe are its cultural diversities and differences. When I travel, I admire the differences of culture, regional architecture, arts, and cooking. Traffic signs and lettering too, are deeply embedded in the culture. They point my way to restaurants which are also so wonderfully diverse wherever I go.
I happen to know that each country in Europe has spent millions of dollars in research on legibility of traffic signs system. This evil plan of The European Committee for Uniformity of Type Design and Type Safety is a plain waste of investment. Therefore I want to ask a critical question: how much this will cost the European taxpayer? Why not adopting for all of Europe a system that has been proofed to be the best traffic sign system in the world, which is the British road system designed by my former professor Mr. Jock Kinneir at the Royal College of Art, London. This system implemented in 1963 is a symbol of stylistic durability. I don’t want to question the skills of prof. Bügleichenhaus but he seems to be unable to produce a system with absolute durable elements. Perhaps he should read the paper of another former teacher of mine, Anthony Froshaug, who in his article called Design analysis: Roadside traffic signs in Design magazine 178 from 1963, proved that there is no reason whatsoever for an improvement of the existing traffic sign system.
Poor Europe. What a shame! Will it finally end up with the specifications of the sizes of our toilet paper, which is at the end of my visit to a restaurant? I condemn Euroface and all similar actions and will do anything to stop the bastardisation of Europe.
Gert Dumbar
principal, Studio Dumbar
The Hague, NL

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