Have you ever looked at the entryway of two restrooms and felt like you were being tested so you didn’t look like a fool entering the wrong one? It’s starting to feel like modern pop culture for new restaurants to prey on our patience and be witty with restroom signs, as if their intent was to give us clues to a puzzle rather than creating easily recognizable signage. It’s no surprise if even today we struggle to picture what the universal sign for restrooms for men and women are, because it was never officiated. How nice it is that the design of the wheelchair symbol is universally recognized and iconic; I wouldn’t blame anyone that had to urgently go to just dash to the wheelchair accessible bathroom rather than figuring out between the two restrooms!
Now, imagine how frustrating it would be to escape out of a skyscraper while there is a fire. With adrenaline running high, even people who frequent the building have only taken the elevator until emergencies. It is infuriating when escape signs are in both different languages and designs while lives are on the line. Welcome to the world before 1987 where non-uniform exit signs run wild.
History of The Running Man Design
The original design of the running man was created by Yukio Ota in 1979 and since 1987 it has become an international standard on pictograms as a consistent indication of where an exit is located within a public facility. This is important for safe evacuation of a building during an emergency such as fire.
Although there are many varieties across the world and modified in numerous ways, the running man and the exit in the pictogram are always present in the design.
History of the technology
The pictograms are lit with incandescent bulbs at the beginning of the design and the flaw in these designs was that in a fire the power to the light often failed. In addition, the fixtures, despite their brightness, could be hard to see through smoke and viewed as regular indoor fixtures.
As technology advanced, battery-backup systems became smaller and more efficient, and some exit signs began to use a dual-power system. The development of LEDs meant that the running man could be made even brighter to compensate for the limited visibility in a fire situation, while using less electricity. With 10 years or more of continuous use, LEDs have become the staple for the running man and many other emergency exit signs.
Presently, you can find the running man located in every public facility in the world, with modern standards it would be equipped with battery-backup systems in case of unpowered emergencies of up to 2 hours and LEDs for brightness, reliability and longevity.
Works Cited
“A Brief History of the Japanese Exit Sign (Also Known as the Running Man).” Universal Design Meets the Exit Sign, 27 Sept. 2015, universaldesignmeetstheexitsign.com/a-brief-history of-the-runningman/#:~:text=The%20actual%20design%20of%20the,and%20 many%20parts%20of%20Asia.
“Exit Sign.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 July 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_sign