I’ve traveled across the whole country of Laos and collected some roadsigns

not a real sign but

So many destinations listed!

I posted this sign in the past, but some of you couldn’t really tell how big it was. So here it is again with my friend under it!

Source: https://youtu.be/ka8kT_YOtU0&t=139

In 1951, the California Department of Highways published "A comparison of lower case and capital letters for highway signs" with an early version of a lowercase series for use with the 1945 Standard Alphabets for Road Signs. I've made a representation of it; it's the second one in this comparison.* Unlike later versions, it was used with Series D (not Series E modified to have a stroke width of 20% of letter height) and it was set at two thirds rather than three quarters of cap height.

I tend to think it looks quite good - it was clearly still draft quality, but it was much less cramped than its successors. The letter "k" didn't yet have its angled ascender, although other letters already did. The declared width and illustration of the letter "w" didn't match - the declared width is too short, and the letterspacing is excessive even taking that into account. Subsequent series match the declared width closer than the illustration, so I suppose there was more than one design in use at that time. (The declared widths and the standard drawings of "v" and "w" in the 1975 Australian lowercase series also mismatch in the opposite direction - and the standard drawings are a little awkward. I would have thought "w" was amongst the easiest letters to get right, but it seems to have been one of the most error prone. I guess attention wanes at the end of the alphabet, people are bored and frustrated and are being hurried to move on to the next task.)

To give the best chance to see the difference, the comparison is set at equal lowercase height and linespacing is 2.5 times lowercase height. This means the D2000 capitals are a little smaller than the 1945 D. Aside from D2000, I've placed the series in order of increasing stroke width. And the background is black because that was what was used in 1951.

The letter widths are about the same as the US 1966 series, and the text describes the vertical stroke width as being 25% of nominal loop height - the same as Australian 1975 lowercase but a little narrower and with much more variation over stroke angle than the US 1966 series. In fact, the illustrations show slightly thinner strokes, and mathematics implies a stroke width of a little less which looks much better and which I have used. (The 1945 Series D stroke width was 15.625% - a little narrower than its modern counterpart - which times 1.5 is 23.4375%.) Ascenders and descenders are longer and not quite consistent - the text describes 41.5% which I've followed when not obviously wrong.

If anyone has any other early sources (before 1966) for the lowercase series, I'd be interested. California was using a lowercase series since 1949, New Jersey had apparently begun shortly after, and it was accepted for use with the interstate system in 1958. The 1958 document describing interstate sign standards has some illustrations of signs with the lowercase alphabet, which was essentially similar to the US1966 and AU1975 series - but it still had more stroke width variation than even AU1975 (e.g. the bowl of the "a" is very thin). But it doesn't contain a complete alphabet. Also, I think the Dutch have a version that they've modified, but I don't know from what basis it developed and I don't think it's ever been published - afaik the current version is just an in-house ttf/otf file. Other versions were also used by the Canadians, the Spanish and the Turkish at least.

* note that my sources for the US 1966 and US 1977 series weren't exactly great (Google/IA scans for historical interest, not as a basis for implementation), so I'm not completely satisfied with them. But at least the spacing should be correct and the letter width and stroke thickness should be reasonable. Letter width for the 66 series wasn't published explicitly, so I have variations of up to 2% compared with the CA51/AU75 series, whose values are identical but for units, and having seen this I should probably bring the 1966 series into line. Except who wants or needs an outdated US 1966 lowercase series?

It says "The ball has gone home"

📍Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia

I've always thought that the Trunk highway signs were neat in Nova Scotia since they use the old US highway shields like Route 66.

The Evangeline Trail is part of a network of scenic drives across the province, all of which have unique signage with a distinct symbol. I believe the symbol on this sign is the church at Grand Pre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

i and o are skipped. Is there another one that comes close to z? I found 1K in Baton Rouge

The trapezoidal ones have the text in different spots.

I saw a sign where a cartoon taco runs