Designer and typographer Margaret Calvert (born 1936) had a major role in transforming British road signs in the 1950s and 1960s. In partnership with graphic designer Jock Kinneir she devised a rigorous signage system of carefully coordinated lettering, colours, shapes and symbols for Britain’s new motorways in the late 1950s and for all other roads in the early 1960s. Efficient and elegant, their system was one of the most ambitious information design projects ever undertaken in Britain. In particular, Calvert was responsible for the pictograms of animals and people, one of the most famous and memorable of which was the sign for ‘Men at Work’ showing the black silhouette of a man with a shovel digging into a pile or earth or cement, set against a white ground with a red warning triangle.

In 2010, Calvert submitted a version of the original sign which she had painted over, replacing the image of a man with one of woman, to the Royal Academy Summer Show. She has now produced a screenprint with Jealous Print Studio reproducing this revised road sign imagery life-size, titled ‘Women at Work’.