Folder Office

A route card from a coastal fingerpost

A pocket route card set in the same three columns as a waymarked fingerpost: place, symbol, distance.

Discipline

Year

Scope, ,

All projects

Wooden signpost with brown direction signs to local beaches, overlooking a marina with boats and a white lighthouse under a clear blue sky.

TypeSelf-initiated study, not a commission

ReferencesTwo CC0 photographs

Format105 × 148 mm card, printed both sides

LanguagesTwo, as on the sign

Question

A trail post above a small marina carries two arrow boards. Each line gives a place, a pictogram and a distance, and names appear in two languages where they differ. Could a printed route card borrow that order and nothing else?

Study

We reset the lower board as a typesetting exercise: names on the left, symbols in a fixed column, distances aligned on the decimal comma. Then we set an invented twelve-stop coastal walk the same way, on a card small enough to hold up beside the sign.

A wooden post with two maroon arrow signs listing beaches and a town with distances, above a marina of small boats
The reference: place, symbol and distance, in that order on every line.
A yellow railway platform sign giving one station name in three scripts
For comparison: one name given three ways, rather than many names given one way.

Kept

Aligned distances made the card quicker to scan than any version with leader dots. The three-column grid is now the default for our route and timetable drafts.