Giving the finger

I always knew this type of symbol by what turned out to be a slang term: a "bishop's finger". The technical term is, of course, a manicule:


I raise it now because there's been a bit of a design makeover of the (old fashioned) signage traditionally used at English polling stations, and the manicules have all gone to be replaced by soulless arrows (and an unpleasant typeface, too). The playfullness of the manicule has been banished by some faceless bureaucrat:


But far from being "old fashioned", the manicule lives on at the heart of our high-tech world:


And I rather like that it has an information design pedigree stretching far back into history:


Manicules survive in surprising numbers even today -- here's a street sign in Hampstead:


And some trendy people use them as an ironic statement of modernity:


The last two images show the sheer variety of manicules in original printers' specimens (they were also known as "indexes", for obvious reasons):


What a civilised world, when you could choose precisely the design of manicule that best suited your purposes.


People complain about the absurd levels of choice contemporary consumer society has reached, but my entire Microsoft font directory only offers a single design of manicule (and a rubbish one at that).

I ask you: is that really progress?