The study appeals to two works on Moscow sign boards: F. Distribuendi’s brochure and S. Krzhizhanovsky’s essay were aimed at examining the authors’ final conclusions and visions of both the imperial and soviet in conceptual form, rather than an ideological marker of chronological time of analysis of street sign boards in Moscow. The maximum coverage of the components of each of the stories about the decoration of sign boards guaranteed the presentation of these authorized stories as a completed narrative complex, which excludes the possibility of involving these works in premature, external to the consistent course of each of these stories, comparison.An analysis of Distribuendi’s narrative complex of Moscow signs showed that the continuing deterioration in the artistic level of ordinary signboards could not preserve the legendary history of their origins and preserve the possibility of reviews of these signboards as a new historical monument.A possible reform of the design of signboards in the form of unified completed forms is hindered not by the lack of calculations but only by the lack of omnipotent desire. F. Distribuendi’s vision of the desire for the final basis of the reform in the design of signboards connects this reform to all previous reforms in the empire, which were implemented only by the power and makes the whole narrative complex of Distribuendi’s work an organic imperial vision. Analysis of the narrative complex of S. Krzhizhanovsky’s essay on Moscow signs made it possible to identify a certain core in it, which streamlines the analysis of the presence of signboards in the city. This core was the vision of capturing the signboards of visual attention and memory of the average person as result of the organization of thinking in a pattern.The last option of thinking can level the sense of difference between people and everyday phenomena. Therefore, the liberation of sight and attention of the sign, an instruction of Soviet institutions from the performances of symbolic signs as the most powerful pattern of hunting for the buyer, was proposed to study further, but under the Soviet vision: transmission of knowledge about the final victory over thinking in patterns on sign boards to new generations.