A supermarket near me has a video sign with a motion detector that says "Hey! [something something]" whenever someone walks by. Tempts me to sabotage it every time.

After going to Seoul for a week and coming back to Berlin, it felt like a breath of fresh air to be in the middle of the city. To be fair, Germany is not immune to ads and there are plenty in Berlin. But at the fucking very least nothing blasts music all day, no flashy strobing led signs en mass on each corner, door, shop or business all around the city.

Loved Korea. Hated ads.

Almost all of what is covered there are simply store names. There are many small stores in that street ... Oh, and the sign in the middle, which is covered, is merely spelling out the name of the street.

Lets move to the KCD or BoTW model, 1 sign above the door showing what you sell / are. No words. Just 1 simple image.

Yes, we do need signs just as navigational aids.

size should be limited–small and near the front door

I think this needs to be on a sliding scale, though.

In a pedestrian-focused area like pictured above, yes, a small sign near the front door should be enough. But other places might benefit from larger signs -- if you're trying to locate a shop from a distance while driving down a fast road, you might need a much larger sign to have any hope of spotting it and reacting to it in time to actually go there. So maximum sign size should probably vary depending on how far it is from the nearest road/path and how fast people are moving on that road/path.

I think it is because the pictures look like how cities are shown in children's books.

.. all at once

Something like this:

Im betting there was a lot of debate around that. Remember its an art project.

And a lot of what they covered is just the signs for the stores themselves. Vienna really doesn't seem too bad.