7 Reasons That This Sign Could Be Better
1. What’s Missing? I saw this sign on a First Capital Connect train yesterday. What do you notice about it? Or, more specifically, what do you notice about the person depicted on the sign? That’s right, First Capital Connect, you have a sign asking people without feet to keep their feet off the seats. You might as well have put this sign up.
2. It’s Not Very Interesting. But if you’re going to ask people to keep something that they don’t have off seats, then feet don’t really have enough appeal. Football has mass-market appeal and advertisers often use it to get their message across. How about this?
3. Some People Don’t Like Football Though. So you can always try a more fanciful approach.
4. Your. Given that the person depicted has no feet you, rightly, don’t use the word your, as you aren’t asking them to keep their feet off the seats; you’re asking them to keep feet in general off the seats, presumably in case any footless passengers travelling on your train are carrying bags of feet, which are probably quite heavy and burdensome. In which case, this sign would be better. This sign would also let people know that putting bags containing items other than feet on seats is also unacceptable, thus serving a practical dual purpose.
5. Targetting. It’s not clear which footless demographic the sign is aimed at. After all, if these footless people are old enough to travel by train, but are still so ignorant that they need to be told not to put their feet on the seats, then the chances are that they won’t know why it is wrong. This sign spells out the consequences to them.
6. Or Be Less Subtle. Or you can try the putting the fear of god into them by letting them know that if they put their feet on the seats then they will be shot by a man without a lower-body. That should get their attention. Can you implement a foot response unit?
7. Feet. Or you could just have thought about what you were doing in the first place and engaged someone competent to do your signage. I’d like to tell you that your stupid sign ruined my journey, but it didn’t. The late-running of the train did that.
Even stranger is the fact that the person in the image appears to have no arms, hands or neck. Apparently, First Capital Connect Train gets an unusual class of passenger.