Industry

Synonyms / Other Terms Used

Industrial Area, Industrial Estate, Industrial Heritage Attraction, Factories, Factory, Factory District

Category

Heritage Attractions, Road Signs

Message / Function

For notice in general and to indicate the location of a building or set of buildings for the manufacturing of goods

	Source	Description
	Modley	Side view of rectangular building with many windows and smoking chimney at the left edge, smoke shown as wavy line
	Modley	Side view of rectangular building with nine windows and smoking chimney at the left edge, smoke shown as wavy contour on flat base
	SADC	Side view of building with sawtooth roof, three windows and two smoking chimneys
	BS 8501:2002	Side view of building with sawtooth roof, six windows and smoking chimney at the left edge
	Catalunya	Side view of building with sawtooth roof, three windows and smoking chimney at the left edge
	NST Portugal	Side view of building with sawtooth roof, three windows and smoking chimney at the left edge
	SIS	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and smoking chimney at the left edge
	SVI	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and smoking chimney at the left edge
	Bolivia	Side view of building with many windows and sawtooth roof, large chimney on top
	StVO D	Side view of building with sawtooth roof, three windows and two chimneys behind
	France IISR	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and line at the left edge indicating chimney
	Slovenia 2015	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and chimney at the left edge
	Kapitzki	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and chimney at the left edge
	Dreyfuss	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and chimney at the left edge
	W-RSN	Side view of building with sawtooth roof and chimney at the left edge
	Dreyfuss	Vertical bar, two right-angled triangles, all slightly overlapping
	Neurath	Side view of rectangular industrial building with eight windows and smokestack
*)	Schiphol	Side view of an industrial building in front of building with six large windows

Note: Some of the examples shown above were mirrored horizontally to contrast differences.

Discussion

The range of pictograms shown in the table above gives a good impression of the diversity of variants and image contents available to indicate the location of a building or set of buildings for the manufacturing of goods. Possibly the side view of a building with a sawtooth roof and a large chimney could be something like a visual stereotype, as it can be found quite often. Many images also display some kind of smoke as typical element that may be more or less outdated, but perhaps could be important to improve comprehensibility.

In our research we discovered that test results available in our database for the referent Industry are regarding one pictogram only:

Zwaga & Poppinga examined the pictogram variant labeled *) for the message Industrial Estate in their undated study Identification and Legibility of Graphic Symbols. In the comprehension task according to ISO 9186:1999 this variant from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport reached a comprehensibilty score of 22.5  only, indicating insufficient understanding of this pictogram.

Recommendations

As no data is available on comprehensibility of most of the pictograms available to indicate the location of an industrial area, we suggest to conduct a Comprehension Test for several representative graphical symbols shown above. Detailed information about the most frequent responses given in each of the response categories should be provided to correctly judge comprehensibility and improve designs. Due to the number of differing image contents, the number of variants to be studied using the open-ended Comprehension Test could be reduced before on basis of the Comprehensibility Estimation procedure.

Tests of pictograms of referent Industry

Zwaga, H.J.G. & Poppinga, J.: Identification and Legibility of Graphic Symbols; Towards a standard for public information symbols. Internal Report, Psychological Laboratory, University of Utrecht