The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

by Roman Mars

Desire paths emerge when people trample on the grass to cut a route to the place they want to go when urban planners have failed to provide a designated paved walkway.

One of the ways to get robust posts to break properly is called a “slip base” system.

The engineering of things people crash into plays a less conspicuous but critical role in our safety as well.

NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard)

Urban reuse is as old as cities. Wherever there has been long-term human habitation, there are instances of spolia, from the Latin spolia, as in the “spoils” of war. Historically, the term has been used to refer to stone that has been taken from one demolished structure and then incorporated into something new.

There are five key principles of good flag design according to Kaye, many of which can also be applied to all kinds of other designs: (1) keep it simple, (2) use meaningful symbolism, (3) use two or three basic colors, (4) no lettering or seals, and (5) be distinctive or be related.

“If you need to write the name of what you’re representing on your flag,” asserts Ted Kaye, “your symbolism has failed.”

These are what vexillologists would call a SOB, short for “seal on a bedsheet.” Seals

The word quatrefoil comes from the Anglo-French quatre (four) and the Middle English foil (leaves).

So when a new traffic signal came to the corner of Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue in Tipperary Hill, a neighborhood named after a county in Ireland, some locals were greatly offended by the placement of the Unionist color red over the Irish color green.

Japanese language as it pertains to green (midori)

Notably, Japan is not a signatory to the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, a multilateral treaty systemizing road signs, markings, and lights across dozens of countries.

Like Sillitoe patterns, Battenburg markings are checkered, but instead of three rows of alternating tones, they are generally limited to just one or two rows with larger blocks of white, black, or other colors. Battenburg markings were developed for use on patrol cars by the Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) in the 1990s following a mandate to maximize both the recognizability and the visibility of police vehicles across the United Kingdom. The pattern’s name comes from the fact that it looks a lot like a cross-section of a Battenberg cake.

provides contrast but also functions as “the last colour to be visualised before human vision changes from colour to monochromatic shades of gray as darkness falls”

To arrive at this design, the project team first drew up a set of six criteria. The symbol should be striking as well as easily recognized and recalled. At the same time, it had to be unique and unambiguous so it wouldn’t be confused with other symbols. For practical reasons, it had to be a shape that could be stenciled onto containers. It needed to have some symmetry as well so it would be identifiable in different orientations. Finally, it had to be inoffensive, a design that wouldn’t have negative or problematic associations for any ethnic or religious groups.

Though ostensibly free of associations, the biohazard symbol arguably benefited from its similarity to the trefoil ionizing radiation warning symbol developed a number of years prior. This simpler predecessor was created at the University of California, Berkeley. Nels Garden, who was head of the Health Chemistry Group at the Radiation Laboratory at the time, later recalled that “a number of people in the group took an interest in suggesting different motifs, and the one arousing the most interest was a design which was supposed to represent activity radiating from an atom.” In hindsight, one could make a case that this trefoil symbol began to establish visual associations between three-leaved iconography and serious dangers.

These days, however, its compelling distinctiveness may also be a drawback—it’s just a little too cool! The symbol has made its way onto shirts, mugs, sunglasses, helmets, sports bags, stickers, and other everyday objects.

Take the Jolly Roger, for instance, which was once one of the most feared symbols in the world, representing things like death, pirates, and poison.

Neon gas was discovered in 1898 by scientists Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers. They derived the name from the Greek word neos (“new”), and it didn’t take long for this new discovery to spark new technologies. The use of neon in signage was pioneered by a Frenchman named Georges Claude in the early 1900s, whose first commercial creation was a barbershop sign in Paris. In the 1920s, his company, Claude Neon, introduced neon signs to the United States. By the 1930s, neon had spread around the world; there were twenty thousand neon advertisements in Manhattan and Brooklyn alone, most of them made by Claude Neon.

Either way, their logic was that cars didn’t kill people—people killed people—a refrain still heard today from various American lobbying groups (see: the NRA).

UPS isn’t alone in their conclusion–federal data has shown that more than 50% of crossing-path incidents involve left turns while only around 5% involve right turns.

London has used a roundabout and statue at Charing Cross as a central point of reference to measure certain distances.

While less explicitly loaded with meaning, simple road numbers can tell stories, too. Fun fact: Second is the most common street name in the United States. Third is the second-most common, First is the third, and Fifth is the sixth. Inexplicably, Fourth is the fourth. A lot of streets that would be called First end up with names like Main, which is presumably why we have this counterintuitive order.

ROAD (Rd): any route connecting two points • STREET (St): has buildings on both sides, perpendicular to avenues • AVENUE (Ave): perpendicular to streets, may have trees on one side • BOULEVARD (Blvd): wide city street with median and side vegetation

WAY (Way): small side route • LANE (La): narrow and often rural • DRIVE (Dr): long, winding, and shaped by natural environments • TERRACE (Ter): wraps up and around a slope • PLACE (Pl): no through traffic or a dead end • COURT (Ct): ends in a circle or loop (like a plaza or square) • HIGHWAY (Hwy): major public route connecting larger cities • FREEWAY (Fwy): has two or more lanes in each direction • EXPRESSWAY (Expy): divided highway for faster traffic • INTERSTATE (I): often goes between states but not always • TURNPIKE (Tpke): usually an expressway with a tollbooth • BELTWAY (Bltwy): wraps around a city like a belt

PARKWAY (Pkwy): usually has parkland on the side • CAUSEWAY (Cswy): runs on an embankment across water or a wetland

The complex shape of this seating unit makes it virtually impossible to sleep on. It is also anti-dealer because it features no slots or crevices to stash drugs in; it is anti-skateboarder because the edges on the bench fluctuate in height to make grinding difficult; it is anti-litter because it lacks cracks that trash could slip into; it is anti-theft because recesses near the ground allow people to tuck bags behind their legs away from would-be criminals; and it is anti-graffiti because it has a special coating to repel paint. On top of all of this, the object is so large and heavy that it can also serve as a traffic barrier. One online critic called it the perfect “anti-object.”