Designing Disability by Elizabeth Guffey

Author:Elizabeth Guffey [Guffey, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 4.7 At Expo 67, Paul Arthur and Associates designed and issued a suite of directional symbols, including a wheelchair access sign. The groups of designs were issued to the public in a guide that urged viewers to “Observez le ‘code’/Watch for these signs,” 1967. From Expo 67: guide officiel: 28 avril-27 octobre 1967, Montréal, Canada: chapitre spécial sur les fêtes du Centenaire.

For his part, the Canadian-born Paul Arthur had been converted to the idea of universal of signs and symbols long before he joined Expo 67’s design team. Arthur’s seven years working as an editor in Switzerland during the mid-1950s left him well versed in Swiss multilingualism. But it also introduced him to the visual panache and universalist rhetoric of Swiss modernist typography. After returning to Canada in 1956, Arthur was credited with bringing a “European influence” back with him (Elder, 2005: 42). Stridently modernist and unflagging in his ambition, Arthur approached the fair’s organizing committee on his own, after learning that the event would be held in Montreal. He presented them with a breathtakingly comprehensive directional and information signage system for the projected thousand-acre site. Arthur was lucky in finding that Expo 67’s planners shared his vision. Norman Hay, for instance, coordinated design efforts at Expo 67. He was already known as “a design missionary” and celebrated for his clean, rational, and modernist work (Delaney, 1967: 21). His main goal was not merely to recruit professional designers into the project, but for a “unity” of design forms (Wainwright, 1967: 31). As the popular journal Saturday Night gushed at the time, “Expo has developed a totally unified system of design that covers everything from wastepaper baskets to signs telling you where to park your yacht” (Delaney, 1967: 23).

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