Follow the brown signs

Check out these bad boys…

Exciting no? This is a unique brown sign symbol, and I love them (who’s surprised?). These symbols are on the tourist signs that want to stand out from the crowd or don’t fit into any of the other regular 93 categories. These I find intriguing and make me want to visit even more when they have quirky images like this one. There are more to see later, but let me just tell you how I came to acquire them…

OK so this week I have had a hectic one, with less time to spend on brown sign pursuits than normal. The one thing I did do though was get in touch with the guys at the Society for Appreciation of British Roads Association (or SABRE as they like to be known). These guys absolutely LOVE roads and anything to do with roads, including signs and other roadside furniture (yes that really is an accepted term they all use, not kidding). After my email my website started being discussed in their online forum. I was at work so couldn’t get involved with the discussion until the next day, but when I did have a look I found there to be a mix of scepticism and appreciation of the site. Most sceptics were quick to point out anomalies in brown tourist signing and the fact that every single one in the whole country wasn’t mapped. I wrote a nice reply stating that the site was new and work in progress and something I do in my spare time, so it would be impossible for me to map them all, instead I rely a lot on user generated data which helps expand the site and usability in the long term.

I did get the feeling that the brown sign is really quite derided, that they are was sneered at for some reason. Obviously there are brown signs to places which probably shouldn’t really have them (e.g. a Tesco’s superstore was one chap’s example) but on the whole there’s no denying that brown signed attractions are diverse and interesting and are nearly always worth the detour (I fought my corner on the forum, you can imagine!).

After reading the discussion about my pursuits a chap called Simon very kindly emailed me and said he loved the site. He makes software for designing road signs and has close contacts with the Department for Transport about authorising signs. He offered to send me some sign design software (wooo hooo!) AND some pictures of unique brown sign symbols. I was a happy lady, so of course I had to include them on the blog. Look at them, don’t they all intrigue and excite you?! This is why I can’t get enough of what I do, just seeing all these fills me with the eagerness and potential of discovering new things. I’m definitely designing my own brown sign as soon as I get the software… and putting it on my front door (oh lucky lucky flatmate of mine), it’s definitely going to have a donkey on it…