In praise of inconsistency

One of the occupational hazards of being a designer is that you want everything to be designed.

And worse than that you normally want everything to be well laid out, structured and with a good hierarchy of information.

I saw this the other day and whilst the typography leaves a lot to be desired it's a very useful piece of communication. Building number, street name and postcode. Brilliant. Common sense. Useful.

Because you see this a lot. It's a building number. This one happens to be 87A.

But what street is it on? Sometimes it's easy to work that out, but often it isn't. Especially if it's a big long street.

If you're one of those designers that's been a postman or a delivery boy you'll prefer street numbers to look like this.

Or, fuck it, let's go the whole hog. Name, number, rank, street, post code, inside leg. Yeah, that's better.

Let's pass legislation to make all buildings display their full address outside on metal plate. In the same colour, the same font. That would make life easier and it would look better. That's good communication, right?

But here's the problem. Scroll back up the page - all those signs are from the same street. Look at the difference. The inconsistency. The accidental. The unintentional. Looks great, doesn't it?

Sometimes it's better when things aren't designed. It took me a while to learn that.

Comments

[Bez]

That kerning on "7A" makes my skin crawl.

[Mark Hadfield]

Very true, and I think it's worth thinking about even reversing the structure of the address.

For so many reasons now (google maps, iphone and sat navs) the postcode is arguably more important than the street or building number?

[lauren]

what i love even more than nicely designed numbers and street names is when the numbers and the streets follow a sensible order - you know, odd on one side of the street, even on the other, in numerical order. i know that sounds normal, but it drove me bonkers how many streets in london don't do that! stukeley st, WC1 anyone?

[Ben]

Yes Mark! Good point.

[The Kaiser]

I used to work in Worship Street.

[Ben]

Really? In the UK?

[The Kaiser]

Yes. It's where the "HQ" of my former employer is - so I was there often.

And it is a house without a number.

[The Kaiser]

But it does have a door.

[alexparrott]

But Mark, don't multiple buildings share the same postcode? I think the postcode is a much simpler way of finding the area, but once you're there you need a number.

[Ben Blench]

The Russians do their addresses backwards: country, town, street, number, name. Oh, actually it was the Ukrainians. The Russians probably do the same thing though.

[Christopher Clay]

"Let's pass legislation to make all buildings display their full address outside on metal plate. In the same colour, the same font." -- This is actually the way it is in Vienna, Austria (and has been since 1923).
As a Viennese in London, I'm having a terribly hard time finding places here. I'd gladly accept a little unification at the cost of individuality... and yes, all numbers are in order, too.

Here's a page on the history and evolution of street numbers in Vienna (in German, but with lots of nice pictures): http://www.sagen.at/doku/Hausnummern_Wien/Hausnummern.html

[Ben]

Thanks for that Christoper.