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October 10, 2004
Bradley Shopping Center
The nameplate for a 50s-era strip mall in the d.c. suburbs, this sign is one of the last vestiges of the city that I remember from my childhood. Like many inner suburbs, Bethesda went through an office tower construction boom during the speculative bubble in the 80s. As a result most of the buildings from earlier in the century were bulldozed to make way for atrocious post-modern mid-rises that would stand vacant for over a decade. In fact even the shopping center at the foot of this sign underwent a less than successful 80s remodeling in which a second `Bradley Shopping Center' sign was added at the other side of the parking lot consisting of those words set, one per line, in (predictably) Helvetica. How they saw fit not to tear down this defiantly retro artifact in the name of Progress is beyond me.
In terms of the type, there's much to like here, at least in the script portion of the sign. There's a lovely swash on the capital B and the thin looping strokes connecting the letters in the `ley' section offer a nice contrast from the otherwise unmodulated weight of the letters themselves. It is surprisingly restrained and unornamented for a script face with much of the dynamism it does possess coming from the gently curving baseline forming an asymmetrical arc between the base of the B and the descender of the y. However this simplicity interacts well with the decidedly spartan Helvetica text that lies below it, thus it doesn't need to overdo its frilliness since the contrast will heighten whatever is already there.
Much nicer is the other sans font announcing the parking policy. I particularly like the framing rules above and below the shrunken letters of `for'. It's a charmingly victorian touch to both de-emphasize and decorate such connective words, and seeing it in a utilitarian context like this is pleasingly disorienting.
Posted by cds at October 10, 2004 05:50 PM