Thought Paper 2

Savannah Armer

17 September 2012

Art 195

Stacy Asher

Thought Paper 2: What does it really Mean?

            Is it bird? No, I think it’s a plane, Oh it’s a Do Not Enter sign. In our modern day world, we are constantly confronted with signs, public, private, etc. These signs can give us information or the road conditions, new sales at the mall, a room for rent, or even makes us want to buy a pair of Nikes. But what do the signs really mean? Do they really have just one function, or is there function also sub-conscious only for our mind to really process.  Public signs are necessary for society to keep functioning as a unit, and to keep people out of trouble.

This do not enter sign was designed to guide public traffic into the private University safely.  It was designed as San Francisco got bigger, and once quiet all girl campus became a booming university in the middle of a big city. The audience is the people who wish to see/visit the university or people actually involved in the University such as teachers, students, etc. The sign is wishing to communicate to anyone trying to enter the Lone Mountain campus safety, without causing a car accident.  The signage creates a sense of place because it has a care about the flow of traffic, the busier areas you go to, the more traffic signage there will be to direct the public and avoid accidents. The campus wasn’t even there one hundred years ago. The campus near this time was on Hayes and Shrader after its previous campus had been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco on Hayes and Van Ness. One hundred years ago the Lone Mountain campus would have still been a cemetery. There would have great crypts and mausoleums covering the landscape as far as the eye could wonder. Rich greens from the grass would have made the grays in the concrete graves pop so beautifully.

To read signage is more than just reading the intent of the sign that you are studying but to look at the sign as a whole picture, where was it placed? Why was it placed? What is placed around it? I enjoy this picture so much because it is the clash of two different ideas. The do not enter sign is right next to the roaring lion, as if to be a warning for all of those people who do want to enter. The demand is instantly met with an image, although it wasn’t placed there to do so. It is the clash of two different signages, one trying to direct the San Francisco traffic and the other attempting to be a decoration, lining the campus with lions as a means of protection for us all.