Kerb teaches seven-year-olds in Leeds how to cross a road. Flat illustration is the right tool for that and the wrong tool for almost everything it gets used for. The rule is the difference: a Kerb figure performs the exact action in the line beside it. If a drawing would work equally well next to any other sentence, it is cut rather than reused.
A figure standing at the edge, which is the moment the whole campaign is about. The kerb is a real profile: 125 mm, the Leeds standard.
The mark, its one-colour cut, and the wordmark alone which is not permitted
Four sentences, four actions, four drawings. Every figure is doing the specific verb. The last one is the test: a sentence with no action gets no figure at all.
Not a pastel set. The figure is one colour so children recognise it as the same person every time, and the road is dark so the figure always reads against it.
#D36A55Every person, every time. Never used for anything that is not a person.#2F4858Tarmac, vehicles and all body text. The thing you are being taught to respect.#F2B705Only where a child must look or stop. Never a background for a whole poster.#2E7D5BThe pavement and the far side. Where the figure is allowed to be.The rounded face carries anything a seven-year-old reads. Everything a parent, teacher or road-safety officer reads is set in the plain sans, because it is longer and duller and needs to be read at length.
A classroom poster, a leaflet for parents, a school-gate sign, a card and the site. The figures differ on every one because the sentences do.
Classroom poster, A2 · one line, one action
Card, 85 × 55 mm
Stop at the kerb, before the road.
Look right, left, and right again.
Listen for anything you cannot see.
Walk straight across, keep looking.
Parent leaflet, A4 · one figure per step
School-gate sign, 600 × 450 mm
Delivered in Year 3 across 41 Leeds primaries. Free to schools.
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Two audiences and two registers. To a child: an instruction they can follow while standing on a pavement. To an adult: what happens, how long, and what it costs.
Stop at the kerb. Look right, left, right again.
A sequence a seven-year-old can do without an adult present.Be safe and smart near roads!
No action in it. A child cannot do “be smart” at a junction.45 minutes, Year 3, one supervised crossing on a real road.
What a head teacher needs to decide whether it fits the timetable.Empowering young people to make safer choices.
Written for a grant panel, not for the person booking the session.This style is a punchline for reasons, and all four of them are here. The first is the one that made it one.
Kerb is invented, built as a portfolio exercise in flat illustration. Leeds, its primary schools and the 125 mm kerb standard are real; this campaign, its figures, sessions and staff are not, and nothing here is road-safety guidance. The visual language is after the flat-figure house style of about 2017 to 2022. Those illustrators are credited as influences only. Part of the One Rule Each series.
Every figure performs the exact action in the sentence beside it. A figure that could illustrate any sentence is deleted, not redrawn.