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Wikimedia Commons1 of 10
Sign, sign, everywhere's a sign-blocking out the scenery and warning passing citizens of lethal radiation, deadly toxins, and hippies. But what are the origins of these signs? Who decided that poisons should be so closely associated with pirates or that the biohazard symbol should look so metal? Here's the story behind the design of a number of popular signs and symbols.
STOP SIGNS
The American standard stop sign is so massively popular that a number of non-English-speaking countries use the exact same design right down to the English word "stop," but it didn't become the official design until 1966 and didn't even really exist until 1923.
The Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments, hoping to get out ahead of a profusion of locally-produced road signs and symbols, came up with a system where the number of sides on a sign would roughly indicate the level of danger if the sign was disobeyed, with four-sided signs representing polite suggestions and circular railroad signs representing "you are about to be killed by a train."
While the number-of-sides rationale went out the window with the popularization of triangular warning signs, the stop sign's unique octagonal profile was kept based on its immediate recognizability.
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John Kannenberg via Flickr2 of 10
BARBERSHOP POLES
Seeing a barbershop pole today can be a quaint, homey reminder of locally-owned neighborhood barbers. But what they should actually remind you of is a soiled bandage, dripping with gore and wrapped loosely around the point of a lance.
From the time of the Roman Empire to the American West, a barber's job often involved a great deal of minor surgery, and chief among them was bloodletting - a medieval medical practice based on the idea that people could have too much blood in their body and needed a skilled professional to remove it.
Typically a patient would squeeze a quarterstaff or lance in order to pump more blood out of his veins, most of which would trickle down the staff to a collecting basin.
Modern barber poles typically omit the blood basin, as well as the little bucket at the top where fresh leeches were kept. So, if you're looking for a realistically old-timey barbershop experience make sure you bring along some bloodsucking invertebrates.
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Process Operations3 of 10
FIRE DIAMONDS
The multi-colored diamond symbol on the back of tankers and semi-trailers isn't just there for decoration. It is telling you how quickly, and in what manner, the contents of the truck will kill you.
The three colored panes represent flammability (red), instability (yellow), and health hazards unrelated to being unstable and on fire (blue), each containing a number from 0 to 4 roughly representing how dangerous that particular aspect was.
The white pane is for special characteristics, such as whether the chemical will explode on contact with water or merely asphyxiate you. Bet you don't feel so much like tailgating now, huh?
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WordRidden via Flickr4 of 10
SKULL AND CROSSBONES vs. MR YUK
A skull and crossed bones has symbolized death for centuries, as apart from the obvious implications (these things used to be inside somebody, but he or she is now dead and won't miss them) they were used to mark the entrance to Spanish cemeteries, rarely a place you'd want to spend a lot of time.
The symbol came back in 1850 as the new semi-official standard for marking poisonous materials. But today it faces competition from the Pittsburgh Poison Center's "Mr. Yuk," a queasy green smiley-face apparently caught in the middle of ralphing up some poison.
As it happened, warning Pittsburgh children about the dangers of eating deadly poison was complicated by the fact that the symbol for "poison" was also the symbol for "Pittsburgh Pirates," so Dr. Richard Moriarty developed Mr. Yuk as a simple and memorable character that could never inspire anybody to eat poison in order to honor the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Unfortunately, because children are dumb, several studies have found that the image of a puking green man may actually attract all the kids who had not previously died because of their love of pirates.
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cygnus921 via Flickr5 of 10
CADUCEUS vs. ROD OF ASCLEPIUS
When visiting a hospital or doctor's office, keep an eye out for magical snakes-one of the most ancient and revered symbols of medicine is the Rod of Asclepius, a serpent entwining a staff that was said to be the sigil of the Greek god of medicine.
The snake is supposed to represent any number of things, ranging from a metaphorical concept of early pharmaceuticals to a literal depiction of the treatment of guinea worms.
What you might end up seeing in up to three quarters of American medical establishments, however, is the Caduceus, featuring twice the magical snakes for your mystical dollar and a nifty set of wings.
Unfortunately the Caduceus has no relationship with medicine, being a symbol of Hermes/Mercury and trade. The false association with medicine began when the US Army Medical Corps mistakenly adopted it in 1902 because it looked cooler.
Some American medical associations are trying to fight back against the caduceus given its somewhat controversial associations with theft, deception, and the uniquely weird legend behind the double snake motif:
Tiresias, prophet of Thebes, came across two snakes getting it on and killed the female with his staff, which immediately turned him into a woman for the next seven years until he was able to kill the other snake.
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srqpix via Flickr6 of 10
PEACE
Lots of weird theories have sprung up concerning the design of the iconic "peace" symbol, ranging from occult symbolism to Nazis conspiracy, when really all the symbol represents is a combination of the semaphore alphabet and existential despair.
British designer Gerald Holtom was asked to create a simple and memorable logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and hit upon the idea of combining the symbols for "n" and "d" inside of a circle, while also imbuing the design with a deep sadness and worry over the future of the human race.
The "arms" of the symbol are meant to be downcast in an expression of sorrow and defeat, based on a misremembering of a classic Goya painting. Holtom came to regret his ultimate expression of depression being adopted by anti-nuclear and peace movements worldwide and attempted to spread the idea that the symbol should be inverted (with the "n" becoming a "u" for "unilateral") but the sad anti-nuclear cat was out of the symbolic bag at that point.
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PL Tandon via Flickr7 of 10
LOVE
Even by the loose standards of medieval and dark-age medical literature, the traditional representation of a heart really doesn't look much like a heart at all. So what does it look like?
Many sources claim that its based on the seedpod of the silphium plant, an herbal contraceptive so popular in Roman times that it was farmed to extinction.
Others say that it's one or another of a bunch of different stylized representations of what scientists call "the naughty bits," but the most accepted explanation is that the "heart shape" is actually a leaf shape from figs, vine, or ivy leaves.
Many pre-Christian cultures in the Middle East used fig leaves as a motif to represent fertility and goodness, and early in Christianity's lifetime Jesus became associated with vines in a similar fashion, while with grape leaves and bunches you can pretty much draw a direct line to getting drunk and fooling around in the Dionysian tradition.
These different symbols percolated for centuries, slowly morphing together until all these different types of leaves associated with fertility/happiness/love/fooling became one generally-standardized drawing of a blood-red heart, becoming most popular due to its association with the Sacred Heart tradition of the Catholic Church.
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The Rocketeer via Flickr8 of 10
IONIZING RADIATION
The "classic" three-bladed radiation symbol was designed by lab workers at UC Berkeley in 1947 and was originally meant to be magenta on a blue background, a color combination meant to maximize visibility and certainly inflicts the same sort of pain and discomfort that actual radioactive death entails.
In 2007, however, the International Atomic Energy Association and the International Organization for Standardization, decided a new and more detailed set of symbols were necessary for sealed radioactivity sources.
They created the above sign depicting a friendly radiation symbol using its magical powers to distract a pirate and allow a person to escape to safety.
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sprogz via Flickr9 of 10
BIOHAZARD
When Dow Chemicals wanted a new symbol developed to identify their biologically hazardous projects, they didn't want a bunch of yahoos in a lab to just rough out some propeller-looking thing in the space of the afternoon. So, they called in the company's marketing and product design department.
What Dow engineers and administrators wanted was a symbol that was symmetrical, easy to stencil, highly recognizable, and not accidentally some sort of curse word in a foreign language or something. After testing 40 different symbols they came up with a real design classic: a pointy, curvy, organic-looking thing that immediately suggests that it will do bad things to you.
The design is so compelling that, much to its creators dismay, it became a popular addition to ties, t-shirts, and tattoos.
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Wikimedia Commons10 of 10Next: The Stories Behind Popular Corporate Logos
WASTE ISOLATION PILOT PLANT EARTHWORKS
The designers of America's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have a unique artistic challenge as well as an engineering one. In designing a site that must keep radioactive waste secure for the next 10,000 years, they have to develop a system of warnings that will still be effective after every known language on Earth might have died out.
While signage in every major language will be posted all throughout the site, the ground over the entombed waste will be marked by huge statues and earthworks, all meant to convey a few key messages such as "nothing valued is here," "sending this message was important to us," and "we considered ourselves to be a powerful culture."
Then again, if I was a post-apocalyptic barbarian warlord aiming to uncover the magical secrets of pre-war New Mexico, a whole bunch of spooky installation art paired with warnings about how nothing of value would be found there would just make me want to dig into it more. So, the purpose of WIPP's earthworks design may in fact be a conscious attempt to create a really awesome Mad Max sequel.
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