Alphabet City Press

11 May 201310 May 2013

P22

P22 is a type foundry that creates digital typefaces derived from historical forms found in art and history. Founded in 1995 by Richard Kegler and Carima El-Behairy and based in Buffalo, New York, they also work with museums and foundations to develop accurate historical typefaces. Their fonts include Cezanne, Duchamp, Czech Modernist and Bauhaus, and I particularly like Miro Extras for its weird and wonderful shapes.

8 May 20138 May 2013

Colours

It’s not just the typography on containers I like, it’s the colours too, like this outstanding trio. The container terminal is a city of towers rich with colour, contrast, and accidents of design. I love the happenstance of placement — like this bold orange stripe that matches and perfectly picks up the underline on the container below it.

5 May 20135 May 2013

Elephant

Here’s something you don’t come across every day: a rusty metal topiary elephant in a suburban park. The park has quite a history: it was known as the Pleasure Gardens, and was the main attraction of the nearby Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, which in the 1840s and 50s was Sydney’s equivalent of a European spa resort. There were walkways and arbours, an amphitheatre, pavilion, botanical gardens and formal terraces. Australia’s first zoo was here too, with Bengal tigers, bears and, needless to say, elephants.

2 May 20132 May 2013

Containers

Every now and then I take a trip down to Botany Bay to take in the view and watch the planes take off and the ships come in to port. Botany Bay is Sydney’s main cargo seaport and two airport runways extend into it, but the northern and southern headlands of the bay are national park. This contrast between protected park and heavy industry is what makes the area so interesting. From the lookout at the end of Prince of Wales Drive, Port Botany, you can look straight out to sea through the headlands of La Perouse and Kurnell, over calm shallow waters that are home to hundreds of territorial marine creatures. In fact when Captain Cook landed at Kurnell in 1770 he named it Sting Ray Harbour after all the stingrays they caught. To the west is the visually rich and fascinating landscape of refineries and containers. I love those towers of containers – the patterns of colour, the marine-inspired names, and of course, the distinctive typography.

29 April 201329 April 2013

Wing Lee

As a designer you wouldn’t catch me dead angling type this way (let alone spacing the words so far apart), but this is so quirky they actually get away with it! There is an element of jauntiness and lightheartedness about it that is quite appealing. Interestingly, it’s the English words that get the wonky treatment – the characters are sedate in comparison – but that only adds to its charm.

26 April 201326 April 2013

Trees

I’m guessing, but I bet this wall was painted by the cafe/gallery/landscapers on the opposite corner. It certainly improves their outlook. These abstract trees are so Australian in their greyness and grey-greenishness and even the grey-blue background has that hazy too-hot-summer quality. I was tempted to stop for a while just to sit at an outside table and admire the view.

23 April 201323 April 2013

Red K

This K was a surprise find, especially because I have driven past it many times without realising it was there. I like its bold graphic nature and its hand-cut appearance, and that despite its large size it is well camouflaged under its protective awning. As I travelled a little further down the road to my destination I caught a whiff of something in the air, and, being in no particular hurry, I started exploring, in search of this mysterious but oh-so-familiar smell. And suddenly there it was, another large but completely unrelated red K on a factory chimney: inside they were cooking up a storm of cornflakes.

20 April 201320 April 2013

Roy’s

Everything good on tv is at the wrong time so the hard disk recorder is my friend. I can’t even remember what late late late night movie this came from, but it doesn’t really matter – one look at the sign and you can hear the neon crackle, taste the beer, hear the music, know that you’re going to be driving too fast on some deserted backroad on a moonless night. The power of typography is astounding in its ability to evoke mood and imagination. Roy’s would not be nearly so inviting if it was in Times New Roman or Arial.

17 April 201317 April 2013

Fresh fish

I like everything about this fish and chips: the red no-mucking-around sans serif and the chunky blue script leave no doubt as to what this vendor has to offer. And I particularly like the ampersand. Then there is the bonus embellishment of fishy line drawings and an orange crustacean that definitely isn’t an oyster. I also like how the sign itself hangs from big hooks, a catch of the day in its own right. Word has it that the takeaway here is pretty good, so I’d better get down there again and find out.

14 April 201314 April 2013

Iron girder

For a few days the awning of this shopfront came down and the writing on the iron girder was revealed. There’s nothing special about it typographically—it looks handwritten by someone who is taking care to be neat, too uneven to be a stencil—but its very existence piqued my curiosity. What I learned about Messrs RL Scrutton and Co is that their employees’ third annual picnic was held on 22 March 1902. The picnickers were conveyed by steamer from King Street to the Fern Bay grounds of Parramatta River, where amusements were provided, toasts were made, athletic events were keenly contested and dancing was indulged in throughout the day in the pavilion. The awning is now back in place and the girder is no longer visible — in fact the shopfront with the awning replaced looks exactly as it did before it was taken down. The only reason I can think of for its temporary removal was that it allowed a brief glimpse into a hidden story!