Alphabet City Press

10 June 201310 June 2013

Communications below

This has the appearance of Helvetica Rounded Condensed, but the rounded quality of the stroke terminators is no doubt the result of the engraving tool rather than a conscious and deliberate choice of typeface variant. Helvetica, the most widely used sans serif typeface, was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger for Edouard Hoffman at the Haas Type Foundry in Switzerland. The Helvetica family contains a large and varied range of weights, and versions also exist for alphabets and scripts other than English. Helvetica is everywhere, from the New York subway to the space shuttle to this small and humble metal footpath plate, scuffed and worn (in a very aesthetically pleasing manner, might I add) by years of foot traffic.

7 June 20137 June 2013

T

From a distance I was not particularly taken with this lettering, perhaps because it is a vertical word, which never seems to read right – a bit like those awful logos that use the same initial cap for both words as an attempt at a design feature but invariably end up ugly and illegible instead. However, the ‘T’ was at eye level, where closer inspection and a different view was unavoidable. What I like is that there has obviously been an attempt to make it stand out from the crowd and that care has been taken in the attention to detail. The overkill of keyline, shadow and outline miraculously works to convey pride of ownership and a bold and welcoming jauntiness.

4 June 20134 June 2013

Hot jam donuts

I didn’t partake of these delicacies at the time because it was a sunny and unseasonably mild day, and the warm red, round-cornered lettering was not enough to tempt me. This cold morning, however, as I sit here with the heater on and half a mind to get back under the warm blankets, it’s another matter. I wish that donut van was here now, because I would most certainly be lured by the jammy colour and evocative letter forms.

1 June 20131 June 2013

Herald

It’s Saturday, customarily the day to sit around all morning with coffee and the paper. These days The Paper isn’t what it used to be — and it just isn’t the same on the iPad — but at least my local paper, The Sydney Morning Herald, is still being printed. The Melbourne Herald was a broadsheet newspaper published from 1840 to 1990. It began as the Port Phillip Herald and within eighteen months had the largest circulation of all the Melbourne papers. In 1849 it changed its name to The Melbourne Morning Herald and General Daily Advertiser. Quite a mouthful, when all you really need is one bold sans serif word to get the message across! The paper changed its name several times until it finally became The Herald on 8 September 1855 until its demise 135 years later.

29 May 201329 May 2013

Woollen

Before tourism, and before Ford, the wool industry brought wealth and identity to Geelong. Proximity to farmlands and an excellent port helped establish the industry and in the 1900s woolstores lined the foreshore – although these days those red brick woolstores house university campuses and shopping centres. The Federal Woollen Mills building is a little way north of town and was built around 1915 for the Department of Defence as a textile mill. The tall metal letters are still intact, but all the more appealing for their stains and rust and evidence of birds nests poking out from corroded corners.

26 May 201326 May 2013

Footpath

My friends and I were daytripping in Barwon Heads on a fine but blustery Sunday. We were full from an excellent lunch of fish and chips, had strolled up and down the main street, indulged in a spot of window shopping and made our token girls-day-out trinket purchase. Then the clouds came over and a sudden burst of heavy rain forced us to take shelter. And right there at our feet, the footpath — previously unobtrusive and unworthy of notice — was transformed by the wash of water into a work of art.

23 May 201323 May 2013

13

It’s not that I’m particularly interested in signage per se, it’s just that it’s so prevalent and serves as such a public arena for a hugely diverse range of typographic styles and usage. Good design and appropriate use of type can make the ordinary, like this storage facility, look striking. This view is at the back entrance, where each of the numbers and roller doors are their own bold colour, but the view from the main road is eyecatching too: the numbers, even bigger than this one, sit at ground level and hug the corners of the building, their minimalist simplicity making them stand out from the crowd of industrial neighbours.

20 May 2013

Installation

Sydney Book Art Group, of which I am a part, has an installation this week at Walsh Bay, Piers 2 and 3, as part of the 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival. ‘Lifecycle’ consists of roughly 750 pages of ‘reborn text’ hanging from a Hills hoist and is the backyard component of the encompassing theme of rooms — there’s also a reading room, lounge room, kitchen and a viewing lounge. As a group we meet on a regular basis to discuss and share our work but this is our first collaboration.

17 May 201317 May 2013

Bollards

Jan Mitchell’s hand-painted bollards are located along the Geelong waterfront from Limeburners Point to Rippleside Park. There are more than a hundred of these quirky and likeable figures, all of whom have played some part in Geelong’s history: there are sailors, footballers, brass bands, fishermen, bathing beauties, firemen, explorers, rowers, performers, as well as these lifesavers. Many of the bollards are made from wooden pylons recovered from the Yarra Street Pier which was destroyed by fire in the 1980s. I love the work that has gone into them. They are meaningful (not only historically, but in their contribution to the revitalisation of the town), well-crafted, and most of all their humour and whimsy proves that artistic endeavour does not have to be heavy and serious to be significant.

14 May 201314 May 2013

Chooks

The Geelong and District Poultry Club Annual Super Show was held on the weekend, and I had the good fortune to be in the vicinity! There were all sorts: chooks that looked so much like raptors it was a relief they were so small; huge fluffballs that didn’t look like chickens at all; chooks with beautiful multicoloured plumage that changed colour and shimmered in the light; bad-hair-day chooks; black chooks; white chooks; mottled chooks; even Foghorn Leghorn was there. The magnificent Rhode Island Red was almost declared champion of the day, his only shortcoming being his not-quite-big-enough size, but (no surprises here) my vote went to the noticeboard of certificates from the 1920s and 30s.