typography – Page 7 – Alphabet City Press

26 September 201326 September 2013

Bowling Club

My ukulele club holds its meetings here, at the Gladstone Park bowlo, twice a month. It’s a good spot – close to the main street but tucked away at the edge of the park – and when you sit outside enjoying a beer and just about the best fish and chips in town, the view across the bowling lawn and park transports you from the hustle and bustle of the city to the quiet of a country town. The board on the wall inside is a bonus. I am particularly taken with the expressive uppercase B and C, and there is just enough unevenness in the handpainted script to convey more personality that an out-of-the-box typeface would have done.

14 September 201314 September 2013

The Lakes Hotel

The Lakes Hotel is in Rosebery, a suburb of Sydney named after Archibald Phillip Primrose, the fifth Earl of Rosebery, who visited Australia in 1883–84. Rosebery has an interesting mix of commercial, industrial and residential buildings. A large section of it was developed by Richard Stanton (who is better known for the Federation suburb of Haberfield) and until the 1990s it lived up to its reputation as a garden suburb by holding regular garden competitions. Rosebery also had a racetrack where Pharlap trained, and a tram line, which would perhaps go some way to explaining why there is a whole swag of hotels between Redfern and Rosebery which display signage that looks very much like this, with its distinctive asymmetrical O.

30 August 201330 August 2013

Boomerang

Boomerang was designed in 1926 by Neville Hampson for music publisher Frank Albert. Every Sydneysider has heard of Boomerang – whether for its distinctive Spanish mission-style architecture, its use as a backdrop for Hollywood movies, its heritage status, or its place as one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Sydney. The Boomerang nameplate comes from the masthead of the Boomerang Songster booklets, which were produced by J Albert & Son in the early 1900s.

27 August 201327 August 2013

The lot

To me, this menu board is so Australian. Every sportsground and showground must have a shabby weatherboard kiosk with a roller-shuttered window and a signwritten bill of fare: a kiosk that looks abandoned and neglected most of the time but comes alive when a game is on and the shutter is opened. I see this sign and I can smell the hamburgers and hot dogs cooking on the grill, hear the roar of the crowd when a goal is scored. And what value! $6 for the lot!

18 August 201317 August 2013

Birds birds

The days are getting longer, the nights are not so cold, and it’s that time of year when the bird sounds are changing with the season. There are currawongs, fig birds, magpies and swallows. I haven’t heard a koel yet, but it’s only a matter of time, and once the currawongs finish their nests we will hear the wicked witch sound of the channel-billed cuckoo. This awning is more likely referring to budgerigars and peach faces and their trade is perhaps less seasonal. The typeface is a weight of the Antique Olive family, which despite its name is not antique, but rather a humanist sans serif typeface. It was designed in the early 1960s by French typographer Roger Excoffon for Fonderie Olive. His other typefaces include Mistral, Banco, Choc and Calypso.

12 August 201312 August 2013

The Roosevelt

I don’t know which I like more: the gold lettering (particularly how the ascender of the lower case h morphs into the ornate swirl of the upper case r); or the reflection of the apartment building opposite, distorted by the imperfections in the glass. Both are shown to advantage by the well-matched rich burgundy of the window frame and brickwork. But I wonder what the Roosevelts would think of their antipodean presence! Not far from this apartment block is the infamous Roosevelt Bar and Diner, opened in 1947, where Frank Sinatra performed, and the problem of prohibition of the sale of alcohol after 6pm was solved by having the patrons order their drinks before the deadline.

31 July 201331 July 2013

Full stop

A full stop (or period in American English) is a punctuation mark that denotes the end of a sentence. The symbol itself derives from Aristophanes of Byzantium who invented a system of punctuation where the height of dot placement determined meaning of a thought or sentence. Until quite recently full stops were commonly used after initials or titles, but punctuation fashions change, and A. A. Milne is now AA Milne, and Mr. and Mrs. are plain old Mr and Mrs (or Ms, more likely). As for a full stop after a single word, I have no explanation, but there is enough of it around on buildings of the late 1800s, especially banks, hotels and civic buildings, that I can only surmise that it was the style of the times.

28 July 201327 July 2013

Utchers

Butchers are proving to be quite, um, fruitful with their signage. In general they are such a happy lot, always ready with a sharp knife to dice that juicy piece of rump steak for your casserole. Perhaps all that cleaver wielding puts them in a good frame of mind to beautify their establishments. This building no longer houses a butcher, but there is no doubt it still has a lot going for it, with its richly stained and cracked render, decorative brickwork, and simple, no-nonsense sign, which despite its age and missing letter remains surprisingly modern.

25 July 201325 July 2013

Sutterlin script

In 1911 Ludwig Sutterlin was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry for Culture to create a modern handwriting script, to be used in offices and schools, and Sutterlinschrift was the result. From around 1920 it began to replace Kurrent, the old German blackletter handwriting, and in 1935 it officially became the style taught in schools. For most non-Germans, Sutterlin is illegible, but in the world of publishing the lower case d lives on. In proofreading it is the symbol for delete and stands for the Latin deleatur – let it be deleted.

13 July 201313 July 2013

Ritz

Swiss hotelier César Ritz started it all in the early twentieth century with his luxury hotels. To live in elegance and luxury, especially in an ostentatious manner, or to dress fashionably, is to put on the ritz. Irving Berlin wrote a song about it: Fred Astaire danced it, Ella Fitzgerald swinged it, Mel Brooks parodied it, Bertie Wooster made a hash of it (until Jeeves set him right), the Leningrad Cowboys speed-metalled it. The swanky Ritz Hotel in London serves a very nice traditional afternoon tea — more, I think, than you could hope for at the Ritz Holiday Flats, despite the quite lovely script lettering of its name and the evocative palm tree.