me studio

travelling along the A12 motorway this weekend i noticed a series of rainbow coloured stickers attached to the street lights all the way along the road, i had seen them before but was curious as to what their function might be…

the answer is rather surprising; it turns out that this motorway which stretches from ‘the hague’ right through to the german border has been designated as the ‘rainbow route’ and the stickers represent what is possibly a first: a visual identity for a piece of motorway

the dutch ministry of transport felt that the road needed some kind of visual markings and the chosen rainbow sticker (attached to some 1600+ lampposts along the route) represent the four primary areas which the motorway dissects: red for city, lilac for mosaic (?), light green for meadows and dark green for forest…

the idea being that the visual identity (i.e. rainbow stickers) would tie the whole area together and give it a coherent feel, quite why this is necessary is a bit of a mystery to me, but it seems that the cash spent to realise this ident has caused a bit of a stir: 120.000 euros worth of colored stickers… (thanks to my brother-in-law ‘ruben’ for unearthing the story)