"I'm just going to the bathroom, don't embarrass me again!"
Some public restroom signs are too fancy to distinguish between men and women.
Our reporter Zhang Shoukun
Our trainee reporter Ding Yi
Standing at the door of the toilet, Ms. Wang was stunned for a while. It was not until she saw a lady walking out of a toilet on the inside that she determined that it was the women's toilet and the one outside was the men's toilet.
"There are a bunch of fancy signs, but I can't understand them. Is it so difficult to mark the door of a public restroom with 'Male' and 'Female'?" Ms. Wang complained to a reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily".
This is what a reporter saw recently in an office building near Sanlitun, Beijing.
No wonder Ms. Wang couldn't understand it. The reporter was a little confused when he first saw the bathroom signs here - the signs for the men's and women's bathrooms are very simple, with a small circle on the top and a triangle on the bottom. The difference is that the triangle in the men's bathroom looks like it is standing up. isosceles triangle, the triangle in the women's bathroom is similar to a flat isosceles triangle.
There is no text surrounding the logo.
"My understanding is that the one with a big belly on the sign is for the men's restroom, and the sign that looks like the one with a skirt is for the women's restroom." A staff member working in the building said with a smile.
The reporter's investigation found that there are many situations in life where the signs of men's and women's restrooms are difficult to distinguish at a glance. There are no text or pinyin explanations on or around these signs, which brings a lot of inconvenience to people.
Why can't public restrooms clearly indicate "male" and "female"?
Should bathrooms be uniformly labeled?
Bathroom signs are hard to read
"After walking around for a long time, I was in a hurry to go to the toilet. When I looked up, I didn't know which one to enter." Ms. Wang from Changsha, Hunan, recalled to reporters the scene she encountered not long ago.
The signs outside the toilets all have a circle on top, one with two vertical lines below, and the other with a sharp angle below.
Ms. Wang entered the toilet following the people who came from behind.
"It's really troublesome to go to the toilet and do a 'brain teaser'," she said.
Aunt Zong from Zaozhuang, Shandong Province has also encountered this phenomenon recently.
"When I traveled to Changsha, Hunan, I was stumped by the artistic toilet signs. I can understand that cities need beauty and designers want to show creativity, but this kind of creativity is not very friendly to middle-aged people and children like me. ." She said it would be embarrassing if she went to the wrong toilet because of this.
Reporters recently visited Beijing, Tianjin and other places and saw that the signs of public restrooms in some large shopping malls are full of design and futuristic sense, but many of them are not marked with the Chinese characters or pinyin of "male" and "female", and there are no English letters corresponding to the Chinese characters. Instead of marking the toilet, they use luminous strips and triangular light tubes instead, which makes it difficult for some people who are in a hurry to go to the toilet.
“There are more and more tricks, which catch people off guard.” Many older people interviewed said that sometimes when they go to the public restrooms in shopping malls, they have to follow young people into the restrooms, and they can’t understand the signs outside.
On the Internet, there is also quite a lively discussion about the indistinguishability of toilet signs.
"Do you know who is a woman with the sign on the toilet door?" "I don't have any culture now. I can't even go to the toilet." Recently, a netizen posted a message because he couldn't distinguish the signs on public toilets.
In the post, there is a picture like this: there is a circle on the left, and below the circle is a row of vertical lines. The vertical lines form a triangle at the upper left, and then an arc appears connecting the longest side of the triangle; the difference on the right is The vertical line forms a triangle on the lower right side.
The post resonated with a large number of netizens.
Everyone discussed their opinions on the logo: "One is the chest and the other is the beer belly. This is how I identified it." "It can be judged based on people's physiological structure. Men have broad shoulders, so they are wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. Women have wider hips, so Narrow above and wide below”…
"I just need to go to the toilet, don't embarrass me anymore!" Many netizens complained.
Some netizens listed tips for quick identification: those with M letters or shapes are male, and W is female; wait at the door to see whether the person is a man or a woman; just call like the cleaning staff, is there anyone there? Went in.
Aunt Zong bluntly said that a design that is incomprehensible is a failed design: "Such bathroom signs look very classy, but have poor practicality. Even young people like my daughter sometimes cannot tell the difference. It’s even harder for people and children. I think it’s enough to label the toilets with the words ‘male’ and ‘female’, it’s simple and convenient.”
The more upscale the place, the more abstract it is.
During the investigation, the reporter found that such confusing public restroom signs are mostly found in restaurants and shopping malls. The more upscale the place, the higher the level of abstraction.
Some of the bathrooms have no Chinese markings at all, and the gender-specific signs are replaced by abstract patterns, such as a combination of circles and triangles, circles and lines, circles and drop shapes, etc.; some use playing cards, There are facial makeup and simple animal drawings; some of them are completely incomprehensible as to what they are.
Why are toilet signs so hard to read?
One view is that some toilets have weakened their main functions.
For example, Nanjing Deji Internet celebrity toilet is known as the "Hermès" of the toilet industry.
Public information shows that the "Michelangelo Art Style" toilet, which was built in 2021 at a cost of 5 million yuan, is located on the eighth floor of Deji Plaza. The male and female toilet areas are distinguished by statues of angels and meditators.
Later, the "forest garden style" with an investment of 8 million yuan, the "blues luxury palace style" with a cost of 12 million yuan, and the "cyberpunk nightclub style" Deji toilet with a cost of 20 million yuan have successively become well-known places for internet celebrities in Nanjing.
Zhao Xiuchi, a professor at the School of Urban Economics and Public Administration at Capital University of Economics and Business, believes that some businesses regard bathroom signs as an important brand marketing element and rack their brains in designing various signs in order to be novel, attract attention, and leave a deep impression on consumers. Lots of tricks.
According to designer Beichen, there are three reasons why unintelligible toilet signs often appear in restaurants and shopping malls: commercial facilities want to highlight their special style positioning, create a high-end or personalized consumption environment, and bring it to the consumers who come. Unique experience; strive to accurately attract target customers, carefully conceive every detail, and polish the overall VI (brand identity system) design; form a business cultural identity, and promote customers to become members and repeat purchases.
Both practical and artistic aspects should be considered
The reporter checked the information and found that there are no relevant regulations on toilet signs.
The current national standard GB/T10001.1-2023 "Public Information Graphic Symbols Part 1: Universal Symbols" stipulates the application principles and requirements for male and female signs in restrooms.
For example, the rules for using bathroom signs are to use a full-body male figure or a full-body female figure, combined with other consistent elements to form a graphic symbol.
In terms of appearance, men wear trousers and women wear skirts.
The National Standardization Administration Committee has stated that the implementation and application of standards eliminates communication barriers between people of different nationalities, different ethnic groups, and different languages, and can provide a variety of directional information for all types of people, thereby achieving the purpose of being people-oriented, saving time, and improving efficiency. .
The "Urban Public Toilet Design Standards" issued in 2016 also mentioned that the entrance and exit of public toilets for men and women should be equipped with obvious gender signs. The signs should be set on fixed walls, and the graphic symbols of the signs should comply with the current national standard " Standards for Environmental Sanitation Graphical Symbols.
Although there are regulations, why do many public restroom signs still make people confused?
According to Zhao Xiuchi, the main reason is that there are no mandatory standards for the signs of men's and women's restrooms. The "Public Information Graphic Symbols" is a recommended standard, and the relevant provisions of the "Environmental Sanitation Graphic Symbols Standard" are not mandatory.
"In order to facilitate the masses, it is recommended that public restrooms be forced to adopt the unified signs of the "Environmental Sanitation Graphic Symbol Standards" and the unified signs of public restrooms be included in the 'house delivery' standards. For restroom signs that are difficult to identify, modifications should be made within a time limit." Zhao Xiuchi said.
Beichen believes that public restrooms should be appropriately redesigned in accordance with the principles of national marking regulations and on the premise of clarity, combined with local cultural symbols, the functional attributes of the area and the building.
"Public restroom signs can reflect equal respect and treatment for individuals with different cultural backgrounds, different cognitive levels, and different living habits, and take into account the needs of different groups of people. In actual design, if the image of the exterior facade of the bathroom sign is not clear enough To be clear, you can consider using text lights, projections, colored floor tiles, etc. to remind you again with clear national unified image logos or Chinese characters on the walls or floors at the side of the respective bathroom entrances," Beichen said.
Zhou Lin, a researcher at the Intellectual Property Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that public restroom signs are a mirror of the times. Some signs have broken away from their long-term inherent styles, which not only reflects designers’ innovative ideas, but also reflects the views of citizens and city managers on Identifies tolerance and understanding of diversity.
As long as the logo design is well-intentioned, can be understood by people, and is not particularly "out of the circle" to cause misunderstanding, it should be allowed.
It can be done unless prohibited by law.
"Art is about innovation. But designers must keep in mind that meeting functional needs is always the first, and artistic expression is the second. The functions that public signs should have should not be sacrificed for the sake of novelty. Not only public toilets This is true for logo design, and the artistic design of any public facilities should also follow this principle." Zhou Lin said.
(Legal Daily)