Description
A compact 10cm x 10cm art book by fine artist Susan Woolf documents South Africa’s taxi hand signs—an informal but essential system used to signal destinations to passing minibuses. Before this book, commuters had little reliable information on the full range of signs beyond the few they used daily. Woolf spent five years researching and illustrating these signs, organizing them with a clear table of contents and an innovative fold-out map showing actual taxi routes across Gauteng, Soweto and Johannesburg—maps even taxi associations never had.
She also created a tactile symbol system that allows blind users to learn and teach the signs. This led to a Braille version, “Taxi Hand Signs for the Blind,” launched in 2009. Ten of the hand signs, for both blind and sighted users, were later selected for the 2010 South African national postage stamps and gained international recognition during the World Cup.
