Reading the Caution Triangle: What ‘Not Friendly Do Not Touch’ Actually Promises
The shirt reads NOT FRIENDLY across the top, DO NOT TOUCH beneath it, and between the two lines sits a yellow caution triangle containing a hand with a diagonal slash through it. The lettering is set in the flat, condensed register of industrial signage — the kind of type you find on a barrier tape dispenser or a locked electrical cabinet. The triangle is the only color in the composition, and the crossed-out hand is the only pictogram. Everything else is text. That arrangement is worth pausing on, because it is doing something more specific than the average slogan shirt. A warning sign is a genre with rules. It names a hazard, states a required behavior, and implies an authority that issued it. The triangle is the standardized European-style hazard…