While doing research for Infohazard, I recently spoke to someone who works in civil engineering and discovered there’s a certain kind of process that goes into the creation of warning signs—and yes, new warning signs get created all the time for new hazards.
Generally, a good set of hazard signs should be:
- Pastel colored and bright
- Use consistent typesetting
- Use symbols that convey either what the danger is, or what to avoid
- Use text whenever possible.
We talked about the SCP Foundation and what those symbols for various things might look like so they are as visually noticeable, distinct from each other, and can communicate information across language barriers. Between my design know-how and his engineering know-how, we came up with something cool.
Below is an example of what a Foundation signage system might look like.
Classes
For The three main object classes, we went very simple: a triangle for Secure, Contain, protect, and a circle for the object. In Safe, it is black because we are sure of its status when contained. The other two have the object in an "active" state, with nodules to represent additional potential for breach. Keter follows in the same vein, with the broken bars representing the difficulty in containing the object.
Esoteric is mostly a style choice, as it represents so many different things. Thaumiel is interesting: These things contain other things, so it's a container inside a container. Neutralized is simple: there's no anomaly at all.
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Tags
Next we have tags. These, like DOT hazard plates, would be modular for the container they're attached to. I used some NATO symbols, some standard hazard symbols, and made a few up. We also discussed that many non-anomalous hazards would probably want to be reported. SCP-2948, for example, is "Safe" but it's a fuckin' NUCLEAR BOMB. Obviously we want to note that somewhere, right? So with that in mind, these plates are designed so they could possibly incorporate DOT or international hazard symbols, too.
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Examples
