During a road trip from Indiana to California, all of the signs to the left were captured by digital camera and documented as a part of this visual collection. They all have informational objectives for the viewer; to inform or provide location towards something, to warn, or even to amuse in the case of the dinosaur sign. Clicking on a group of signs pictured on the left will direct you to a new page where a few of the noticed design specifications (as I see them within the photos) are discussed in more detail. I will briefly discuss each group of signs and how they pertain to enhancing my visual literacy and some of the things that I noticed within their visual identity.

Throughout the duration of this class, primarily through my experience of this assignment, I now find myself thinking much more about the visual attributes of objects, signs, interfaces, products, everything... oftentimes spending time just questioning whether the intention of the sign or symbol, informational or instructional graphic, or even the desktop icon do in fact allow the viewer to come away with the desired knowledge about that object. This is the most significant change I have noticed in myself, that designers must constantly be questioning their intentions and decisions with aspirations to communicate in the most satisfactory manner to the user of their designs. This collection of experieced visuals can be thought of as a starting point on my road trip through living a life of design.

Some design elements I noticed are common across the board for all of these roadsigns:

• there is a sense of symmetry noticed in all road signs - the object that people need to pay attention to is centered within the sign's background (of a square, diamond, rectangle). Oftentimes, the graphics appear as though if folded in half, both sides would be completely symmetrical



• most all of the signs to the left have a solid background color (green, blue, brown, or yellow) with a superimposed object (a symbol, icon, text, graphic) depicted in white or black [this convention allows people to know that they are looking at signs which are important objects to notice if driving]



• the size of the signs is fairly consistent, forcing the objects depicted on the signs to be approximately the same size across the board. Also, if there is type on the sign, it is in ALL CAPS to provide visibility to those on the road from a distance



• another element that I noticed during our roadtrip was that these signs were fairly consistent as your crossed state lines. The sign for a hospital or a food exit always had the same graphics (as I recall from the trip). However, other formal elements of these signs might be different as we crossed state lines, such as the color scheme or if it was in a group of signs versus a solitaire sign.