Touch the Egg

If you hang out around Down/Midtown you must have noticed those parking things, the thingies that replaced parking meters locally.

Not long before the solarpoweredparkeonofthefuturethings came, new digital parking meters replaced the old classic wind-up mechanical ones. Cool, whatever. But then shortly after that (the new digital meters were FAR from worn out), these Parkeon things start appearing. I can’t help but think there was some wasted city money involved in that equation but whatever, I’m sure the City Parking People know more than me. About parking. These things, made by a company called “Parkeon” (brilliant name) are solar powered (cool), let you pay with change other than quarters (cool), and spit out a bunch of printed sticker paper at you every single time you use them – not so cool. And Parkeon’s slogan is “Create Harmony for Your City.” And seeing these crappy stickers littered about the city is just swell. Yay. But that’s only the beginning of the rant…

All that said, I never would have seen fit to write about this except for one issue really. Even though the waste of paper is atrocious, the real issue is THE CRAPPY SIGNAGE. What the Holy Mother of God is up with the iconography in these signs. Every time I see these things, I wonder why they are demanding me to TOUCH THE EGG.

There’s a certain heroism in refining an idea down to its utmost core for use in city signage, but WOW there’s not much heroic about these signs – they are lazy, ugly, and don’t communicate their message well. I’m thinking they must have been designed by some sort of wacky committee, kinda like what you see in corny yet somehow appropriate video.

Anyhow, end of rant for now. Sorry I blew up.