signs and the signified | when signs lose the plot

I wish I’d had the chance to grab a shot of the house nameplate I passed on the way back from Evesham today. Not having a camera with me was always going to be a hinderance, though. It was a perfect example of when signs go wrong.

When you see a sign, whether it be a signpost, bossy ‘do-as-I-say’ sign or just a signifier of place, the moment you add an image (or numbers) and words together you implicitly produce expectations of your audience, irrespective of whether or not they choose to actually pay due attention to it. The ‘Men at Work’ label is generally accompanied by a stick(ish) man with an absurd, far-too-regularly circular head using an oversized trowel in a destructive manner. Yes, we expect people to be working when we see that sign. Not having a cup of coffee, jabbering on their mobile or checking themselves out big-time in the wing mirror of their van (I witnessed the latter today. Almost offered him some mascara); just destructing away the road with a big spade.

When the sign on the roadside says ‘Birmingham 8′ I generally anticipate this to mean that Brum is about 8 miles away from where I am, and actually expect it to be 8 miles away (as opposed to it being a quasi-sign made out of a bedsheet with some mad exclamation of an exciting afternoon’s score at an unnamed local football ground – and before you lot start, I’m not a footie fan).

Remove the words ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ from taps and we’re automatically conditioned to assume the temperature of the water by the colours red and blue. And we rightly get a bit miffed if our expectations aren’t fulfilled.

So, please someone tell me how in name of sense and logic, someone thought it fit to nail a sign depicting the name of their house ‘The Poplars’ and line it up with the image of a German Shepherd dog? The closest explanation I’ve reached so far is the puntastic and groan-inducing ‘trees and bark’, although I fear this is taking word associated design into a more disturbing league. Any better explanations?