Last year in Italy, Venice, my eye was caught by this ‘construction workers’ sign. I quite like the symbols. Working on websites, you are often confronted with the demand to have a simple icon or symbol in stead of a textual link. Often difficult to decide which one can be used.
Most of the symbols used on this sign are unkown to me, with some I still understand the meaning, with some I have to read the words underneath to understand them. Which is a bad thing. After this italian sign, I noticed in more countries including my own, that for many things we still make up our own symbols… is it part of the local culture, or should we make them all the same, like we are doing it with most of our road-signs. In most spanish-language countries, Spain, Costa Rica and Panama, you’ll see less often the road sign with ALTO, most of them are being replaced with STOP. Which is weird. Some roadsign are still different, does it say something about the people?
How did I came up which these thoughts? Well, I ran into this website on which you can design your own ‘warning-signs’… so, check out the designwizard from Electromark .


Costa Rican version [outside Fortuna] the people have huge balloon shaped heads, carrying huge shopping bags…


Panama version [Boquete] the people have no neck, one leg is bend…