Karen, several reasons.

1. Aesthetic: The old ones had a consistency of form and content, with embossed lettering. So, putting neatly printed flat "expressway" lettering (functionalist U&lc modernism) in funky old decorative frames just doesn't look right. these are aesthetic objects, as well as functional.

2. Complex outline of signs. The irregular shape of the signs may create distracting irregular negative spaces with the irregular "word envelopes" of the names. Especially when the street name is crammed in with the neighbourhood graphics.

3. Clutter. The integration of BIA (Business Improvement Area) "neighbourhood" designations, as shown in the Star article you linked to, is poorly executed. Hopefully the design consultants can get this standardized.

One good thing about the new system, it can be changed/repaired quickly. When the new signs were put up in our area, and "Geoffrey St" was mis-spelled "Goeffrey St", they fixed it within a couple of weeks.

I think you're spot on with those three points. I found the old Toronto signs had a nice old world charm about them.

But do you know why all Caps (old) signs in my second link appear more readable than the Rotis (new) ones?

I find the new ones very hard to read, and at least one other person (ok, another designer) claimed that the new signs almost caused him to have an accident.

In the sample of the new sign published in the Star article, the Mixed case Clearview legend is crammed into an uncomfortably sized white field. There is very little space top and bottom.

When we were developing Clearview our field tests pointed to the need for a reasonalbe amount of space around the legend. Lack of such a field always reduced its legibilty.

Also it's hard for me to tell from the example what version of Clearview they are using. I have a feeling its an older version.

3M, as part of their original investment in the early research funding was given around 100 sets of the fonts for their clients use. This may be one of those instances.

Karen (and anyone else), if you are interested in the details of Clearview's development, I have a pdf that explains it some. It is rather large to post here, 1.4megs, but if you contact me I would be happy to e-mail it to you.

Karen,

1. Rotis has legibility problems, in particular it's too high-contrast for this kind of application. Also some letterforms are confusing, for instance the way the "c" is just the "e" without a fine horizontal crossbar.

2. The letterpsacing is too large, particularly in relation to the word spacing. Or are they going for the DotCom look?

3. I'm guessing this example is tracked out, and they use the condensed to accomodate really long names. But it would have been better to maintain a constant letterspacing on all signs, and here, for instance, just center the words.

4. Perhaps not enough contrast between white lettering and green background.

Your new signs are letterspaced U&lc Rotis. That's bad any way you slice it.

"Anyone who would letterspace lower case ..."

I suspect they're going for the dot com look. The authorities try so hard to be trendy. And I'm gonna have a look around today, I suspect they letterspace all the signs, not just those with short words.

I've seen a mall use Rotis really large, maybe about 2 feet tall, in 3D acrylic, nice colours, NO letterspacing, and it looks really good. Too bad they put them in the basement carpark, hard to get a good shot.