Poop, poop, poop

Here are my (numbered) poop pictures, 1-5, all taken from the back alleyways of our town.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

What do these notices tell me? (Apart from round here, we have a poop issue.)

* We're talking poop from dogs. Not cats, humans, gerbils, mice, guinea pigs, rats, boa constrictors, ferrets, fish, rabbits, or parrots. (All of whom I know live in our town.) It's dog, because the text word dog appears frequently, as does the helpful picture. (Looks like a terrier.)

* I like the pictures of poop where the designer has added wavy lines, which I infer to mean freshly-laid hot poop or smelly poop. (Is this post uncomfortable yet?) I assume the wavy lines also help to identify the dots behind the dog as a deliberate graphic item, and not to be mistaken, for example, with representation of gravel, or the patterning of metal created by a sign disintegrating.

* Picture (5) breaks my expectation of dog graphics. I like the way the graphic locates the human as the problem and not the dog. The humans are, in a way, responsible for poop on our streets.

* In our language, we're very coy! (Believe it or not.) Poop is a friendly word! Shorter than excrement, more polite than crap, more acceptable than ****, more direct than soil.

* The notices are sized A4 or A5 or less; they're fixed by adhesion or cable ties to posts or fences at eye-height or just above.

* These notices have been created elsewhere, transported to their fixed locations, and someone has spent time fixing them to their supporting structures.

* All signs carry a logo of the Local Council or Town Council. This suggests at least two tiers of officialdom, busy tackling the dog poop issue. Our Town Council is subordinate to the more widespread Local Council, and is accountable to them via meetings.

* I wonder if there's been involvement or coordination at a local level between residents and Town Council and/or Local Council. I think this partly from the emplacement of the signs but also the changed character of two of the signs (4) and (5).

* I'm not sure, ultimately, about the precise legal powers of the Local Council or Town Council to fine miscreants. Pictures (2) and (3) suggest nuances, or variable conditions. Picture (2) suggests negotiation where the text reads may, not will, regarding the £1000 fine. By contrast, picture (3) suggests a non-negotiable fixed penalty. I guess this reflects the difficulty of identifying offenders, but it also hints to me of the admin processes that need to be gone through before the £1000 fine is finally issued.

* The notices are made of materials designed to be weatherproof, although pictures (4) and (5) suggest they are more temporary than the others - these notices are wrapped or laminated after printing in flexible plastic of less durability. They suggest a timely response to offenders who perhaps use this alleyway as a pooping zone.

* In each notice, I'm making a slight adjustment about who speaks what text. In picture (1) for example, the cartoon words Scoop that poop may have been in the original drawing, or the words may have been inserted by the designer to appear as if from the voice of the artist-child. The words fit the idea of a child's rhyme with their simple, monosyllabic, 3-beat phrase. I can almost imagine clapping out the rhythm!

Yet the words below, Please clean up after your dog perhaps are 'spoken' by a different voice - the Town Council. (I'm looking at the proximity of the logo and the position at the base of the rectangle, a reading order that works to underline the child's instruction.) In their level-laid sans serif, the Council words contrast the higgledy-piggeldy sans serif child script, perhaps lending a 'level-headed' weightiness and authority to the child's demand.

I also note the Council does not directly use the word poop but clean up after. Maybe it's socially unacceptable for the body taking the status of Town Council authority to present themselves using such common everyday expression. They're perhaps taking an elevated social position with their elevated language. Whatever, they certainly appropriate the child's simple and eloquent appeal and incorporate it visually within their own statement.

The word Please I think is designed to ease this transition between child and Town Council voices: the Council is approaching the adult reader with a softening voice, as if to speak authoritatively and kindly on behalf of the child - perhaps as a parent 'translates' what their child says for the convenience of others. Would it now be too far to imagine the Council is speaking here almost in loco parentis?

But really, I'd like to think here not on graphic design, not on place and context for these notices, and not much on which adult reads them (or is made to feel bad enough to next time bring a poop bag), but who created them? By what means did these signs arrive here?

These notices have many people (participants, authors, voices, hands?) who brought them into being. I'm taking picture (1) as my example.

A cartoon drawing, text and image stylistically as if drawn by a child (participant 1) contains a second sans serif text in a designer's arrangement (participant 2). The logo or presence (or authority, if you are moved by such things) of the Town Council is represented to the lower right (participant 3). The sign is placed in the street by an unseen hand with metal fixture and possibly a step ladder (this needs two people according to Council safety regulations, so I shall include hands as participants 4 and 5). Add the graffiti artist who came along too. (Participant 6.)

Only six people? Far too few participants! Behind each of these people/participants (authors, voices, hands?) is the unseen presence of many, many others.

I could be wrong about the narrative of process for picture 1, but say this sign has resulted from a competition for children in schools to produce a new poster for the area? (Count 2000 staff, kids, parents.)

The best cartoon for clear visibility and communication as chosen by the Town Council's in-house designer (count the design team, Council administration at both levels) would be made into the sign we now see all around our town.

Then the sign is installed at chosen sites. (Did I count the materials designers, materials suppliers, handling agents, manufacturers, quality control staff, and entire administration and distribution fleet who delivered the signs to storage?)

Now add the local newspaper who doubtless would have covered the competition, the photographer who snapped the first installations, the neighbours who wanted to have their say in the press, and do I count the print, advertising and distribution network of the local paper?

That might account for several thousand people involved in the making of this single sign.

But I'm aware that as a reader, I just made up that good-will, neighbourly story about a competition, and then I handed over my trust to the Town Council, because really, I wanted it to be true. I might have to face a different reality. Would the sign have less integrity, or the Town Council take in my eyes a lower value as a representative of honest-dealing, if I found out that the sign had nothing actually to do with children at all, but an in-house designer sat at a desk one afternoon and drew a cartoon in the style of a child's hand?