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A white running figure heading through a door on green, marking the way out.
Also known as: Running man sign, Fire exit sign, Exit sign, Green man exit, ISO 7010 E001, Running man exit sign
A running figure passing through a doorway on green marks an emergency exit route. It is deliberately wordless so that it works regardless of the reader's language or literacy — the reason it replaced the written word EXIT across much of the world.
Marks an emergency exit or the route leading to one, often with an arrow indicating the direction to travel.
Contexts: Public information
Uses a pictogram rather than a word so that it can be understood without reading English or any other particular language, which is why it replaced text EXIT signs in most of the world.
Contexts: Public information
Was designed in Japan in the late 1970s and adopted internationally in the 1980s; the United States is the most prominent territory still widely using a written EXIT sign instead.
Late 1970s onward · Contexts: Public information
Belongs to the safe-condition class of safety signs, drawn as a white pictogram on a green square or rectangle. Green marks where safety is — an exit, a route, equipment for helping someone — and never a hazard.
Contexts: Public information
Is registered in ISO 7010 as E001, emergency exit left hand, and E002, emergency exit right hand — the two are the same figure mirrored, and which one is correct depends on which way the reader must turn. A sign showing the figure running towards the door on the left belongs on an exit to the left.
Contexts: Public information
Takes its green square from the safety-colour convention rather than from anything about exits: green is the safe-condition colour across the whole sign system, which is why a first-aid sign and a defibrillator sign are green too and a fire extinguisher sign is not.
Contexts: Public information
Is seen wherever a building has a planned escape route — offices, cinemas, aircraft cabins, ships, railway carriages, car parks — and is deliberately the same drawing in all of them, because the whole point of a pictogram is that a stranger in an unfamiliar building can read it without stopping.
Contexts: Public information, Navigation
Related forms that are not treated as separate canonical symbols — see our variant rules.
Left-hand form (ISO 7010 E001)
The figure runs to the left through a doorway. Used where the exit or the route lies to the left of the reader.
Right-hand form (ISO 7010 E002)
The mirrored figure, running to the right. The pair is a directional instruction, not a stylistic choice.
Written EXIT sign
The word EXIT in red or green letters, still the dominant form in the United States, where building codes have historically specified lettering rather than a pictogram. It cannot be read by someone who does not read English, which is the argument the pictogram was designed to answer.
A white figure in mid-stride running toward the right, passing through a rectangular door opening, all on a solid green rectangle.