Episode Details

Road signs are among the most ubiquitous manufactured objects on the planet, yet almost nobody thinks about them as engineered products. This episode takes apart a single highway sign — literally and figuratively — tracing it from the aluminum smelter to the side of the road. You'll learn about the 3M and Avery Dennison duopoly that controls eighty percent of the reflective sheeting market, the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals that standardized sign shapes across seventy countries, and why a desert sign in Israel needs to be twice as large as its European counterpart. By the end, you'll never look at a highway sign the same way again.