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Comment by milchek | Hacker News Reader

I noticed this a lot more on signs and posters when I moved to Singapore earlier this year. Back in Melbourne, design seemed a lot more varied, but everything here is the same style. My guess is that a lot of the signage is from government agencies here who hire the same design teams?

Anyway, design trends come and go. We have seen this in the last couple of decades with the heavy skeuomorphic designs found in earlier Apple products and then later the “flat design” trend.

I’m curious what the next trend will be?

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That is one thing that I find concerning about Asia (having lived both in Singapore and Hong Kong). Messages from various government agencies are written and illustrated like kid books. It makes me uncomfortable that either 1. grown-ups are so infantilized that they need to be addressed like that or 2. that governments feel their grown-ups are too stupide to be talked to normally.

Having lived in Asia and Singapore for a while, I can assure you that they don't infantilize their people.

In fact, some of the government reminders can seem cruel to westerners. For example, public signs that count the number of drunk driving deaths per month.

The reason why everything important in Singapore has to be in picture language is because they have so many nationalities living together.

If I remember correctly, the subway signs were already in English, Malaysian and Chinese. But there's also plenty of Indian, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Thai citizens. And of course Japanese tourists.

An 8-language sign starts to be unwieldy, so I applaud their approach of using graphics instead.

3. a lot of the messaging is kid-inclusive (e.g. warnings about getting your hands crushed in subway doors)? At least in Hong Kong and Japan you will see a lot of kids using public transport independently, can't remember about Singapore.

I do not recall the metro warning signs in France. I do remember them in Japan. It's because the Japanese ones were funny and draw you in to a story.

You could have the following without the pictures: https://pradt.co/imgs/poster/pleasedoit02.gif

There's different styles to this, there's variations which are more Disney or Anime like, what's the issue? The point is to draw attention, I don't see what the need is for the ostensible seriousness, if it's not effective at educating and drawing people in to your message.

I'm surprised you don't remember the Rabbit of Paris Metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Paris_Métro (maybe they changed it?)

how are you enjoying Singapore?

I like it. This is our first time moving to live and work in a country away from Melbourne, and we took a while to decide where we would do it with Singapore always topping the list.

That said, it hasn't been easy. Grappling with all the usual tasks with getting set up in a new country + dealing with the pandemic and "Circuit Breaker" has been a challenge for our family, but like everyone else, we're doing our best to stay positive and adjust.

cool :) welcome and with any luck the CB will be permanently over on June 1. am Singaporean, feel free to ping for advice/pointers. contact info in bio

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