There is a particular kind of honesty in a warning sign. It does not ask you to like it. It does not soften the message with a smiley face or a little joke in brackets. It simply states the terms and trusts you to read them. The shirt in front of me does the same thing, only it does it in the middle of a room full of people who have not been given any warning at all.
The design is plain enough to describe without embellishment. Across the chest, in the blocky, slightly compressed lettering of a municipal notice, run the words NOT FRIENDLY and, beneath them, DO NOT TOUCH. To the left sits a yellow caution triangle, the sort you see on the back of a lorry carrying something corrosive. Inside the triangle, or beside it depending on how the print falls, is a hand with a diagonal line through it. The whole thing is the visual grammar of a hazard sticker, borrowed wholesale and worn on a t-shirt.
What interests me is not the joke, exactly. The joke is fine. It is the fact that the joke is made in the language of public safety. A caution triangle is not a personality. It is an instruction issued by an authority you have never met, about a risk you have not yet encountered. To wear one is to borrow that authority for a moment and point it at yourself. The shirt says: I am the hazard. Please adjust your behaviour accordingly.
I have been thinking about this because the warning sign is one of the few pieces of graphic design that has never really been improved. The yellow triangle, the black border, the exclamation mark or the pictogram inside it: it arrived fully formed and it has stayed. You can see it on a farm gate in the Peak District, on the back of a van on the Parkway, on a laminated sheet taped to the inside of a lift. It is a democratic sort of design. It does not care whether you are important. It only cares that you read it.
The crossed-out hand is the part that does the real work. A triangle alone is abstract. A hand with a line through it is specific. It says: this is about contact. This is about the distance between one person and another. The shirt is not saying do not look at me or do not speak to me, though both might be true on a given Tuesday. It is saying do not reach out and touch, which is a narrower and more interesting request. It is the request of someone who has been touched without asking, or who anticipates being touched without asking, and who has decided to put the rule in writing.
There is a version of this shirt that would be merely grumpy. I have seen those. They tend to use a different typeface, something handwritten and faux-apologetic, and they usually include the word anxiety or introvert as a kind of explanation. This one does not explain. It does not ask for understanding. It issues a notice. That is a more confident position, and a funnier one, because it treats the wearer as a piece of public infrastructure that has been temporarily closed for maintenance.
The retail listing describes it as an introvert shirt, and I can see why. But I would push back slightly on the idea that introversion is the same as unfriendliness. The shirt does not say I am tired or I need a minute. It says not friendly, which is a stronger and more deliberate claim. It is not a request for space. It is a refusal to perform the preliminary warmth that strangers expect. It is the sign on the door of the workshop that says no callers, even though the person inside is perfectly capable of being pleasant if you catch them at the right time.
I find that refusal quite bracing. Most social clothing is designed to smooth things over. A nice jumper, a friendly colour, a slogan that invites a comment. This shirt does the opposite. It puts a barrier up before anyone has had the chance to be disappointed. There is a kindness in that, if you squint. It saves everyone the awkwardness of a misread signal. The hand is crossed out so that the hand does not have to be withdrawn.
The caution triangle, though, is the detail I keep coming back to. A warning sign is not a boundary. A boundary is something you set for yourself. A warning sign is something you set for other people, and it assumes they will obey it. That is a hopeful assumption, and slightly absurd. Anyone who has stood at a pedestrian crossing in Sheffield on a Saturday night knows that warning signs are often treated as suggestions. To wear one is to make a small bet on the civility of strangers. It is, in its own blunt way, an optimistic garment.
You can find the shirt here, if you want to read the full wording for yourself. It is sold by Quirky Cotton Collective, and the design is exactly as described: the lettering, the triangle, the crossed-out hand. Nothing about it is subtle, which is the point. It is a piece of graphic design that has been repurposed from the side of a van to the front of a person, and it carries the same message either way. Keep your distance. Read the sign. Do not touch.
Editorial note: this publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.
What I like most about it is that it does not ask to be liked. It is a shirt for people who have decided that being understood is less important than being left alone, and who are prepared to say so in the clearest typeface available. The caution triangle does not mean danger, in the end. It means attention. It means look at this before you do anything else. And on a rainy Tuesday in a queue for a bread cake, that is not a bad thing to be reminded of. Some people are not open for business. The sign is not an insult. It is a courtesy, printed in yellow and black, and it is doing its best.