Stop Sign Red Color Palette with Hex & RGB Codes

OK. Here is something you probably didn’t know. The Stop sign wasn’t always red! But before we delve into that, lets check out a bit of history.

The idea of having signs on the road was proposed by one called Eno from New England in an article he wrote for the Rider and Driver magazine in 1900. The first stop sign in the United States was installed somewhere around 1920s in the automobile city of Detroit. The sign was 2×2 feet metal sheet painted white with the letters in black.

In 1923, the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments suggested shapes of different signs. Their engineers (not designers, mind you) put forward a simple and ‘logical’ approach to the signs – the more the number of sides in the sign, the greater danger level it indicates. Thus, the circle with an infinite number of sides was to be used in the greatest danger zone – railroad crossings. The now familiar Stop sign with eight sides was to be used on roads.

The octagonal stop sign was originally yellow with black letters. This was one of the recommended traffic signage as per the 1935 166-page Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. That was because a high reflective red material wasn’t available.

In a couple of decades, this problem was solved and the octagonal Red Stop Sign was born.