German capitalizes all nouns, not just then proper ones, so missing title case doesn't change much.

But surely it'll help in this case, where an article is being published in English and being shared on an English language forum.

Fair.

It’s from newspaper headlines - using lower case starts to words looks really weird when the word is an inch plus tall on the paper.

That's just because you're not used to that, many European languages don't have title case and newspapers still look perfectly okay.

Eh, spent plenty of time outside the US. It always looks a little odd when that isn’t followed [https://www.pinterest.com/widget34/french-signs/] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_Spain]

After all, which is clearer and easier to read - aeropuerto (road sign in spain) [https://images.app.goo.gl/iRcmkxvYX3hxLG59A] or Aeropuerto (road sign in Chile) [https://images.app.goo.gl/xcME6HEb4r1AnGS16].

Even more fun when for instance Spain doesn’t follow that consistently![https://images.app.goo.gl/P7cpegHC2unMsfJy7].

Talk about a typesetters nightmare. Still, better than India where a lot of signage is still done by hand.

The last two images you linked to are fake, and clearly designed by someone who doesn’t know Spanish and has never been to either Chile or Spain. No signs look like that in either country.

Nobody would dare capitalise “de” in Santiago de Chile for instance.

Confirming, the image linked by grandparent is tagged as 3d illustration on shutterstock[1]. A similar illustration with lowercase “de” spelling exists too[2]. Actual road signs in Chile have lowercase “de”[3].

[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/santiago-chi...

[2]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/santiago-de-...

[3]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CARRETERA_COSTERA_...

> After all, which is clearer and easier to read

Clear and easy to read is the one that you expect to read, which depends on your previous experience.

It's like when Americans insist that fahrenheit is more "intuitive" since it's what they have experience with.

Well the one thing I do like about Fahrenheit is that it puts the average range of temperatures I experience on nice and tidy 0-100 scale.

I could say the same about Celsius as a person who enjoys tea, hot showers and looking at CPU temperature every now and then.

Your last two links are fake. And you can check on your own Wikipedia link that for Spain's direction signs, only proper nouns are capitalized: full uppercase on conventional roads for historical reasons, otherwise the usual capitalization rules such as on highways or town roads. Whereas full lowercase is reserved for service directions (e.g. service road, airport, hospital, beach). The exceptional capitalized service directions are really old town signs.

So UI designers prioritize form over function as always