| >To get each of the signs officially signed off with formal budgets and professional designers allocated, I would imagine the administrative red tape involved You don't need to get "each of the signs officially signed off with formal budgets and professional designers allocated". You could expedite his current process, with just a series of templates made on an el cheapo design program (even Word) and a vinyl cutter. Here's a guy making custom signs nobody asked for. Why would a replacement for that include "formal budgets and professional designers"? One could leverage the same informal process and budget, and instead of duct tape and lots hours, just use a run-of-the-mill printing service (the kind that does photocopies)... >Sato just keeps making signs on the spot where he notices a need for them, and rips them off when they're no longer necessary. Sure, and that's just "write message, add arrows/icons, sent to plotter, stick, unstick" -- the same as today, minus the time to painfully create by hand. Of course this way you also lose the artisty and quirkiness, but I'm only responding to whether this can be done. And my answer is: it can be done, cheaper, faster, easier, and doesn't take much. Not any big budget (not much better than the duct tape budget), not "professional designers", nothing. You could keep the same unoficialness, and just use a printer and a PC to get the signs (you could even skip the plotter, and just e.g. stick A3/A2 signs with tape). As for whether it should be done, I'd say no. His efforts, even if wasteful, make the world better and more quirky and charming, in a way that an automated replacement wouldn't. |