personal SDL project: this hospital is a serif-free zone!

One of the most interesting and wonderful things about self-directed learning is the way it begins to affect your every day life. Your attention becomes focused in different ways, and whatever you have chosen (or not) to learn about becomes a lens through which you start to see the world. I’ve noticed letters and signage and fonts for pretty much my entire life – my parents have some weird stories about the things I noticed as a small child. This is one of the reasons why I decided to focus on typography for my personal learning project.

Over the month of February, I found myself waiting in hospitals for an inordinate amount of time. As such, I found my attention focused on the sheer amount of signage in this type of space. I didn’t take out my digicam, just because taking pictures in hospitals seemed a little wrong, and rude somehow. Instead I scribbled down some notes and drew a few pictures, which I have attached here for your amusement. Signs are essential to the functionality of a hospital. People need to know where they are going, and where to find stuff, and they need to do it quickly and efficiently. Most surfaces are covered with signage of some sort. Room numbers, labs, doctor’s offices, facilities (both medical and the more regular type, like washrooms), warnings, directions, phone numbers…. It’s a long list. Like most other institutions, hospitals have developed signage styles and systems. Familiarity accounts for a lot – when signage is consistent, users who can retain information (this doesn’t count for everyone - these abilities vary, and some people are unable to retain certain types of information), they don’t have to re-learn the system every time and can find their way more easily.


One of the most striking things I noticed about the typefaces used in St. Paul’s hospital is that they are all sans serif fonts. I mean it. All of the directional and informational signage is serif free. The only exceptions were for some logos, like for the hospital itself and the St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation. This seems to be the case for the majority of all institutional signage. I simply assume that this was because sans serif fonts are easier and faster to read… but as I thought about it some more, and some of the things I’ve been reading about typefaces started to trickle through my brain, I realized this didn’t make complete sense. After all, reading words and letters is all about quick and easy recognition, right? And, to a point, more recognizable features (like serifs) make words and letters easier to read. I decided to do a little more research about how serifs affect readability, and ran across a really great literature review on the topic. As it turns out, no one has really come to a firm conclusion either way about how serifs affect readability. Some claim that it clutters the letterforms, while others claim that the serifs act as additional recognition factors that make words easier to recognize. The origin of the serif, while not carved in stone (pun intended – keep reading) seems to be a little more agreed upon. Serifs seemed to arise from the practicalities of carving letters into stone – the additional points hide the effects of wear over time. It seems reasonable to extend this to other materials, with letters being carved from wood or cast from lead and other metals for the printing process. Now that most printing processes are digital, we aren’t bound by this kind of thing. Is that why serifs have disappeared from lots of print? Or is it simply the fashion of the time? If I got into my time machine and went to a hospital in another 100 years, would the signage be in blackface and old gothic fonts? That’s kind of a funny image…


I also found it interesting that good old handwriting still plays a major role in the hospital environment. Nametags are hand written, charts are filled out by hand. There are also a fair amount of handwritten signs, usually meant to fill in functions and gaps left by “official” signage. Some of these gaps are obvious and a little disturbing. The “emergency exit only” sign was seen on a stairwell that didn’t have any other official markings about its function on it.


Other gaps seem to occur over time, and have more to do with the regular usage of space and equipment, and the preferences and needs of the staff who actually work in the space:


“Keep this door open at all times”

“Keep this door closed at all times”

“This phone does not dial out”




That kind of thing. Nurses on the whole seem to have reasonable handwriting (unlike many doctors I’ve met). This seems to be important for many of the same reaons why teachers have good handwriting – people actually need to read and understand what you’re saying.



The placement of signs was also interesting. Most of the big directional signs were hung from the ceiling, out of most people’s line of sight. You have to go out of your way to see them. However, it seems to be an issue of efficiency. Where else would you put stuff without having people run into it? Of course, this might get people to actually read the signs, which from my experience is a difficult, if not impossible task.