Every corner signed before morning. Someone knew the city.
An American street gives itself away in seconds. A red octagon at the corner, a yellow diamond on the approach, a green street sign hung high on the pole. Build a block from New York or San Francisco without them and it could be anywhere. Put them in and it reads as America before anyone spots a yellow cab.
Start at the corner with STOP
The STOP sign is the one everybody knows, and in the US it does a lot of work. Most quiet junctions are all-way stops, so one crossing can carry four of them, one on each approach. Add a YIELD where a side road joins and a DO NOT ENTER at the end of a one-way street, and the junction starts to explain itself. On our sheet these are the real federal designs. STOP is R1-1, exactly as it appears in the US traffic manual, not an artist’s guess.
Yellow diamonds go on the approach
British warning signs are triangles. American ones are yellow diamonds, and that one change does more to set the country than any building. Put them where a driver would need them: a pedestrian crossing near the shops, a curve before the bend, signal ahead before the lights, a deer crossing on the road out of town. Then the school sign, the fluorescent yellow-green pentagon, outside anything that could be a school.
Name the streets
Street signs are where New York and San Francisco part ways. New York’s are green with white letters: Broadway, 5 Av, Wall St, Times Sq. San Francisco’s are white with black letters inside a rounded border: Lombard St, Haight St, Ashbury St. Fit them on 1×4 tiles high on a lamp post, two at right angles on a corner, and the crossing has an address.
Do not forget the parking stacks
A Manhattan pole never carries one sign. It carries a stack: No Standing, Street Cleaning, 2 Hour Parking, and DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING, which is a real sign. We put these on 2×4 tiles so the stack reads as a stack. Red lettering means you can’t park and green means you can, exactly as it works on the street.
Everything on one sheet
Our USA Edition sheet has 72 stickers on one A4: the regulatory signs, the yellow diamonds, the school sign, the Interstate 95 and Route 66 shields, the New York and San Francisco street signs, the parking stacks, a full set of traffic lights and WALK and DON’T WALK signals. Every sticker is sized 0.2mm inside its tile so it sits within the bevelled edge, and you cut them out yourself.
We post it to the USA for £4.95, with duties paid. If you are building a whole block, The American Street adds our graffiti and screens sheets in one tracked parcel. And for the junction itself, here is how to pick the moment for your traffic lights.
