17 AUGUST 1934, Page 3

Petrol Stations Petroleum filling-stations arc of all kinds. A few

of them are attractive, but a majority are ugly. The London County Council has taken a step in the right direction in deciding to regulate them in certain streets and places which, by reason of their aesthetic claims, it is empowered to protect. The new by-laws pre- scribe with much 'exactitude the style and size of lettering and the colours of the panels and frames of standard signs,—a vast improvement, unquestionably, on most of those that are all too evident today. But was there no means of avoiding the single, stereotyped official style, upon which no designer will be permitted to improve ? Should petrol signs, for all time, rank with pillar-boxes ?