September 26, 2004
The Plan
For the next several weeks I will be looking at retro signage, but with the preference that the design actually be vintage rather than a modern attempt at aping an earlier style. I am especially interested in designs using early 20th century sans serif faces as evidence that there was a degree of diversity in outdoor type in the years before the helvetica monoculture took over.
In order to qualify for inclusion the sign should give the impression of having remained unchanged for several years, and responsibility for its design has been abandoned by the owner. As a result of this neglect, it has been allowed to go through years of looking dated and out of style until the current moment, where through nostalgia and the fact that the other signs on the street have left it behind, it has become eye-catching and unique once more.
Posted by cds at 01:27 PM
September 27, 2004
The Spot
A combination diner/bar in Harrisburg PA, the signage for The Spot mixes an unexpected variety of styles in ways that both clash, and create interesting (though presumably unintentional) harmonies.
The upper panel, with its repetition of bright orange dots on a stark white background draws your eye back and forth across the line, dragging them over the letters of the restaurant's name, each nearly hidden in a separate dot. The characters themselves are a blocky sans-serif with interesting modulations of stroke on the O and the S which seems to bulge in its middle segment. However, against this harsh modern face, set in rows above and below the dots is an ornate serif with an almost victorian sculptedness to the line hight as it literally wraps around its corresponding dot. Despite these differences in style, it's worth noting that they stumbled onto an echo with the sans-serif being modulated in weight, and the serif in size.
Below the main sign is a secondary banner that adds a third style to the mix. Offsetting the dark text on light background above, the name of the restaurant is repeated in a reversed out sans-serif face, but this one highly geometric in style. Aside from the capital T, it's hard to find a single sharp corner on any of the characters, in marked contrast to the much heavier and more angular sans font above (contrast the sharp point on the P or the squared off edges applied to the S in the upper row).
Posted by cds at 06:42 PM | Comments (81)
Evergood Market
The Evergood Market lies on Mass Ave north of Harvard Square and aspires to some European-style `hearty' `fresh' `produce for yuppies' type of image. And this is precisely what makes the design of the nameplate so successful. The first element that jumps out is the color choice, the background is a creamy canvas color, suggesting dark, waxed paper, and the text color is a rich red that contrasts strongly from the background but picks up some of its warmth.
The typeface is a mixture of friendly, hyper-rounded and pleasantly thick curves, paired with a sharply clipped tail placed in unexpected locations on the letterforms. It almost looks like a `swash sans-serif' if such a thing could be said to exist. These strong diagonal lines combine with the curves, most strikingly in the G character central to the design, to give the letters a feeling of movement and rotation. On some of the other characters, this extra stroke gives them an almost humanist feel, as though this extraneous ink came from a calligraphic brush or pen as it was lifted from the paper.
Posted by cds at 08:55 PM | Comments (92)