I am optimistic that Rainbow Street in Jabal Amman will be a more welcoming place after the renovation is completed. Recently street lamps, small rubbish bins and benches were installed, and some trees were planted. And then there’s the new signage.

First of all I wonder why on the Falafel takeaway, Al Quds, there is a small, “official” sign that says “Al Quds”, like the big sign above the door. The small one is redundant. The sign itself looks clumsy and is hard to read. And it indicates a direction, it points to the right (at least from a Europeans point of view, who reads from left to right), though the entrance is to its left. In this case, indicating a direction doesn’t make sense.

Then there are the signs that indicate the street name, either attached to posts or even to private property – I bet that these signs on private houses won’t survive there long. And anyway, they don’t look very official, despite their blue color, that we know from official road signs. The ones in Rainbowstreet are rather small and hard to spot, and sometimes placed behind lamp posts where they are hard to see.

Finally there are the signs that indicate e. g. a car park, a crosswalk, and schoolkids. They didn’t use the official pictograms, but photos! Why would you do such a thing? They are not known, unlike pictograms, so you have to learn them. But as they are rather detailed compared to abstracted pictograms, and as they provide little contrast between background and foreground (look at the car park sign) it is hard to grasp their meaning, especially when you drive by, and these signs are meant to inform drivers, above all.

The funkiest sign is the crosswalk sign, a mixture of cut-out image and vector graphic. There’s something totally wrong with it. Or have you ever seen a shadow-absorbing crosswalk? Me neither.

It’s a shame that they supposedly spent a lot of money on renovating Rainbow Street, but then hired a company that has apparently no clue how to design a signage system that’s of help.