Margaret Calvert

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Margaret Calvert (b. 1936, South Africa) is a typographer and graphic designer who, along with colleague Jock Kinneir, designed many of the road signs used throughout Great Britain, as well as the Rail Alphabet used on the British railway system.

After moving to England in 1950, she studied at the Chelsea College of Art. Kinneir, her tutor there, was appointed head of signs for Britain's roads. He then hired Calvert to redesign the road sign system and she came up with simple, easy-to-understand pictograms, most notably the signs for 'men at work' (a man digging), 'farm animals' (a cow), and 'schoolchildren nearby' (a girl leading a boy by the hand, whom she later revealed to be herself), based on pre-existing European road signs.

In addition to her road signs, she has designed commercial fonts for Linotype, including the eponymous 'Calvert' font, which she created for use on the Tyne and Wear Metro system.[1] She was awarded an honorary degree by the University of the Arts London in 2004.

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  1. ^ Calvert. Identifont. Retrieved on March 9, 2006.

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