Road signs and .gov.uk

[cb a1]

Saw an interesting toot on Mastodon just now.
"If you have driven in the UK, have you ever wondered why http://GOV.UK looks so familiar?"
Apparently they use the same colour scheme as for road signs??
The image they put up looked convincing, but has anyone here actually compared the colours themselves?

[Conekicker]

I'd go with "coincidence" and leave it at that TBH.

[multiraider2]

The government have for some time been trying to get all their disparate sites into a uniform look and linked from the same place. I think that work is largely complete now. Companies House told me of that intention quite a few years ago. So now there is a uniform look and I would assume the colour scheme is what a focus group or something similar decided was the best fit. All just a flight of fancy/random thought, but perhaps there was someone from transport or with an interest in it leading that group.

[Glen]

Gov.uk websites use the "GDS Transport" font, which is based on the Transport typeface used on road signs.
It was a deliberate decision to have an easy to read font as part of a unified redesign of all government websites and services.

[Telstarbox]

It looks great on the website, although I think the colours are different - there's more of a sage green on GOV.UK.

[Chris5156]

Saw an interesting toot on Mastodon just now.
"If you have driven in the UK, have you ever wondered why http://GOV.UK looks so familiar?"
Apparently they use the same colour scheme as for road signs??
The image they put up looked convincing, but has anyone here actually compared the colours themselves?

I don't think they are the same colours. They use black, white, blue, green and yellow, all of which are common on road signs, but the GDS design blog shows that the actual specific colours used have changed multiple times since they were first introduced in 2012, so even if they were once based on road sign colours (and I can't find a reference to that) they wouldn't match any more and won't have done for years.

The designers are very open and proud of the fact that their typography is inherited from UK road signs, which they describe as an example of brilliant British information design, so if they were also borrowing road sign colours you'd expect it to be mentioned somewhere.

[jnty]

This is the colour section of the design style guide: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/st ... ur-palette

There are overlaps with signage but I suspect this is coincidental, though it would be interesting to check the exact shades of matching colours.

The designers are very open and proud of the fact that their typography is inherited from UK road signs, which they describe as an example of brilliant British information design, so if they were also borrowing road sign colours you'd expect it to be mentioned somewhere.

Yes - I'm sure if this were intentionally the case there would be a very clear source for it somewhere on their blog or elsewhere. I couldn't find any reference to road signs in their github backlog. I wonder if someone has read about the typography and run a bit far with it.