What is it about?
This is a study about how paper signs were used by retailers in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paper’s relative fragility may have simultaneously reflected the uncertainty that people felt in the early days of the pandemic, while its familiar and timeless presence may have provided a sense of emotional security and direction. Marking a return to “business as usual”, stores replaced many, but not all of the informal signs with professionally produced and branded signs suggesting that the early “blind panic” had been replaced by a form of “steady state”.
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Why is it important?
It is important to document those early uncertain days of the pandemic as we will forget the sense of disorientation and need to learn a new way of being.
Perspectives
I was fascinated by the way in which digital signs rarely changed to reflect the pandemic, unlike the paper signs The paper signs weathered the pandemic with us. They were marked up, became bent and torn, taken down and replaced with new paper signs reflecting yet another change. Paper was the go to technology along with masking tape to mark places to stand. What would retailers and customers done without these basic tools?
Dr Joanne McNeish
Toronto Metropolitan University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Retail Signage During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding, August 2020, University of Oklahoma Libraries,
DOI: 10.15763/issn.2470-9670.2020.v4.i2.a64.
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