| Buenos Aires Visual Plan | |
| Native Name: | Plan Visual de Buenos Aires |
| Date: | 1971–72 |
| Location: | Buenos Aires |
| Theme: | Design of a renovated system of road signs |
| Motive: | Obsolete and poorly communicative road signs system |
| Patrons: | --> |
| Organizers: | --> |
| Participants: | Government of Buenos Aires City Shakespear–González Ruiz Studio |
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The Buenos Aires Visual Plan was the first program to establish an organised system of traffic signs in the city of Buenos Aires,[1] developed and implemented between 1971 and 1972. The plan had been thought by the Buenos Aires administration led by then Intendent Saturnino Montero Ruiz and carried out by the design studio managed by architects Guilermo González Ruiz and Ronald Shakespear.[1]
The program, officially named "Plan for the Design of a Visual Identification System" (Spanish; Castilian: Plan para el Diseño de un Sistema de Identificación Visual), is regarded as an avant-garde graphic landmark in the Buenos Aires urban design,[2] [3] [4]
The road signs were later replicated in other cities in Argentina and even in Latin America.[5] [6] The visual plan style has been used as model for future signal systems in Buenos Aires.[7]
Ronald Shakespear has recognised the work of graphic designer and typographer Jock Kinneir as the main inspiration for the BA Visual Plan.[6] Kinneir, along with his assistant Margaret Calvert, had been designed the road signs in the United Kingdom[8] from 1957 to 1967. Kinneir's sign is considered one of the most ambitious information design projects ever undertaken in the UK, becoming a model for modern road signage in the world.[9] Kinneir and Calvert's system was notable for the use of typography (that included the use of lowercase letters in the signs) and the coordinated use of shapes and chromatic scales to sort the information.[1]
In Shakespear's own words:[1]
The main purpose of the visual plan was to establish an information system which "guided city inhabitants to their destinations without asking anything to anybody".[10]
As part of the visual plan development, all the road and street name signs were redesigned. Before the plan, street name signs were fitted to walls, and then featured different typographies. The González Ruiz/Shakespear studio replaced them with signs located on street corners. Those signs consisted of posts with two plaques attached, each one indicating the street name and way.[2] [11]