Most urban designs are at best useful for skaters as an afterthought, or more typically: specifically created to foil skaters, but not this set of signs.

The Drive Skate Shop in Vancouver created two of these, the first of which mimics a typical and ubiquitous “sandwich board” style sign, which normally consists of two planes angling out toward the bottom for stability.

By extending those surfaces onto the ground and adding a slight curve, a skateable sign is created — ride it at your own risk, however (it’s steep!).  Metal supports provide stability, too.

The second variant is crafted from curved plywood and slopes up a wall, imitating a typical pasted posters toward the top, but turning into an angled ramp near the ground, effectively turning the whole wall into a more skate-friendly surface.

As marketing strategies go, this one has it all: simple and clever, cheap but functional and to-the-point, letting passing skaters take a stab at riding the signage then maybe stopping for some supplies when they tank their landing.

If you were zooming down a familiar street and suddenly saw a bunch of concrete steps floating in the street in front of you, would you hit the brakes? The strange sight would likely be enough to slow you down a bit, especially as your ‘driving brain’ perceives an obstacle and instinctively reacts. Officials in the small Icelandic fishing town of Ísafjörður are counting on it with their first 3D crosswalk, intended to reduce drivers’ speeds on the narrow street.

They've painted this 3D effect zebra crossing in Iceland to slow traffic and it seems to be working pic.twitter.com/G14fHSlNUc

— Chris Choi (@Chrisitv) October 20, 2017

When you’re approaching the optical illusion crosswalk, your brain perceives it as a 3D object well before you actually cross it, preventing panicked brake-slamming. The illusion is only effective from one direction, though (and when looking at it from above.)

Inspired by similar projects instituted in Russia, China and India, the crosswalk by road painting company Vegmálun GÍH is fully permitted, and street painters had to practice 3D painting a lot before they put it in place. These ‘optical speed bumps’ not only encourage drivers to slow down (in theory), but also call attention to pedestrian crossing points, potentially making them a little safer.

So, do illusions like these actually work? That’s debatable. In cities like Beijing, where traffic tends to be a chaotic free-for-all, officials say they’re helping, and that at the very least, they can keep pedestrians visually occupied until the light changes so they don’t jaywalk. Critics of the technique say local drivers will disregard the effect after the first time, which may be true, but at least it’ll garner a reaction from visitors.

Exposed to the elements, hand-painted signs on building exteriors chip, crack and fade over time, but one artist is shining a spotlight on these historic illustrations, restoring them through animated and layered projections.

Craig Winslow is meticulous about his work on “Light Capsules,” digging through archived newspapers, magazines and photographs to find ads showing what these signs and their typogrophies originally looked like (in some cases over 100 years ago). The result of one such search recently helped him project over an ad in Winnipeg, Canada for Porter & Co., crockery, china, glassware, lamps, silverware, cutlery, which then switched to another projection for The Home of Milady Chocolates on the same spot.

And it isn’t just about recreation, but also spectacle and preservation. People passing by, used to ignoring faded signs, suddenly stop, look up and start thinking about them and the histories they represent as well as their historic value to a city.

In the last few years, Winslow has brought his projections to cities around the world including Detroit, London and Los Angeles. A lot of the advertisements he projects over provide insights into what was popular in the early 1900s when hand-painted signs were common.

His projections are often layered, cycling through to highlight different stages of ads (or overlapping ones) that have evolved and changed over the decades. Importing digital images, Winslow uses a suite of editing tools to fill in the gaps and create animations.

And while some argue for restoring them outright (using paint), that can be problematic — critics say repainting ruins the authenticity, plus new paints tend to be more vibrant and would be unlikely to represent the original. In a way, Winslow has found a middle ground — his method lets people get a sense of what they looked like without putting the originals at risk.

More from the artist’s website: “There’s an extra element of excitement in signs that are incredibly worn or have multiple layers—The best ghostsigns candidates to become Light Capsules have multiple layers, called palimpsests, providing a compelling canvas which digital recreations can bring a focus to specific layer in time. Projection is ephemeral, non-damaging, and non-invasive, providing a strong preservation solution that traditional mediums can’t provide. Using light as a medium, we can visually explore the stories of every layer, seeing how a building changed throughout the years.”

A pane of glass overlaid with a simple line drawing brings crumbling ruins to life at one of Austria’s most famous historical sites, reanimating the partial building near the Open Air Museum Petronell. When a viewer lines up the illustration with the structure, known as Heidentor (Heathen’s Gate), the image completes itself in a compelling yet entirely low-tech fashion.

Located just east of Vienna, Carnuntum dates back to the the 1st Century A.D., when Roman soldiers expanded on an existing town 50,000 people to create a military encampment. Between 354 AD and 361 AD a huge triumphal monument was erected next to the camp and city. Contemporary reports suggest that Emperor Constantius II had it built to commemorate his victories.

“When the remains of Carnuntum disappeared after the Migration Period the monument remained as an isolated building in a natural landscape and led Medieval people to believe it was the tomb of a pagan giant. Hence, they called it Heidentor.”

Preserving ancient historical sites is often a balance between stabilization and restoration; fully restoring can enhance the exterior appearance, but is costly and arguably diminishes the authenticity of a ruin. This approach strikes a balance, much like augmented overlays in digital history apps.

Blue & white Handicapped Parking signs and stencils are one of urban life’s most familiar icons… and then there are those that have been creatively hacked.

There’s a fine line between amusement and mean-spiritedness but when it comes to visual imagery, outrage is often in the eye of the beholder. With that in mind, this edgy, spiky, flame-enhanced “Parking Space Designator” (is that what the kids are calling them these days?) follows the road blazed by TV’s Dr House and his boss flame-graphic walking cane. You’ll find the stencil on steroids above outside a Retail Boutique Incubator, tentatively attributed to Sean McDougal of Disfunctional Design Store.

Interlocked & Loaded

Those interlocking driveway paving stones can be fit together in any number of patterns, including a reasonable, recognizable facsimile of the accessible parking graphic. Flickr user zwei zwei (zwei1189) captured this image on February 5th of 2015.

Brazil Not

A parking spot reserved for the “Sorcerer” truck, we assume? Not quite – this clever conjunction of a designated handicapped parking space and some awesome eye-fooling 3D graphic art comes from Brazil, where there’s an ongoing problem of able-bodied people parking in handicapped spaces “just for a minute”. Yeah, riiight. The explanatory text on the wall roughly translates from Portuguese to read “When you stop in place for disabled, you make his life more difficult”. It’s a theme we’ll revisit further on in this post.

Hold My Beer And Park This

Flickr user Mike Klassen snapped this mildly yet distinctively modified accessible parking sign behind a BC Liquor store in late September of 2008. As for that “fine line” we mentioned previously, well, this edges close to it but we’ll leave the last word to Nathan Ridge, one of the commenters at Klassen’s photo page: “I’ve heard of discrimination against disabled persons, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it the other way around! I love it, especially since I’m in a wheelchair myself!”

Triple Chair Lift

When Mexico sends us their handicapped parking place stencils, they’re not… actually sometimes they ARE sending us their best. Take the “EXCLUSIVO” stencil above, snapped by Flickr user Mary Doyle (buffoonmeatmary) on August 5th of 2007. We can’t say whether this awesome graphic shows a disabled person getting into or out of their wheelchair but either way, the image demands a Six Million Dollar Man bionic sound effect to accompany it.

Elderly Man Driver

Elderly man driver, that elderly man driver, he don’t say nothing but he must know something, he just keeps rolling along… at 10mph under the speed limit until he (or she) parks, right on top of this designated Elderly-only parking space. Who knew this even existed? One might state just being a senior citizen isn’t actually a “disability” in the strict sense, though don’t try convincing any grouchy cane-wielding oldster of that. Flickr user Wee Viraporn snapped what appears to be a standardized stencil on January 3rd of 2010.

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Enabled 18 Weird Creative Handicapped Parking Signs