November 22, 2004
Kaplan Furniture
A victorian sweatshop-style building off mass ave in the area between central and kendall where MIT stops and the warehouse district begins. They clearly had a major design problem to solve given the length of the company name and the narrowness of the paintable-space on the side of the building (only this corner is visible to passers-by on mass ave). Whether their approach was entirely `successful' is left as an exercise to the reader. The extremely slanted baselines coupled with a reverse-oblique axis on the characters themselves makes the sign legible even without cocking your head, but also makes the words feel highly unstable---as though the words would fall right off to the left if not for the white border holding everything together.
The touch I appreciate the most though is the inclusion of the street address in the top and bottom corners. The 9 numeral along with an adorably literal arrow pointing to the doorway make the sign do double-duty as both advertising and mail delivery. Now that's economy of design...
Posted by cds at November 22, 2004 01:34 PM