typography – Page 9 – Alphabet City Press

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.

8 April 20138 April 2013

The Rio

I’ve been seeing quite a few shop awnings lately which feature this cursive writing style. The Rio looks like it has seen better days, but the writing is pleasingly elegant and surprisingly well preserved compared to its companions. And I like the mix of colour and texture of the building above it – the falling-off shingles and the painted brick and the splash of terracotta on the windowsill.

5 April 20135 April 2013

93

Impact was designed in 1965 by Geoffrey Lee for British type foundry Stephenson Blake. Stephenson Blake was the last active type foundry in Britain, producing type in zinc as late as 2001. When it closed in 2005 its typographic equipment, by then commercially worthless but historically priceless, was passed on to Monotype and the London Type Museum. Impact, with its thick strokes and compressed letterspacing, was intended, as its name suggests, for impact. It is a typeface best used for headlines rather than body text. Or really, really big numbers, like this one.

2 April 20132 April 2013

Spam

Back in pre-Comic Sans days, Souvenir topped the list as one of the most disliked typefaces among typographers. Souvenir is an old style serif typeface, originally designed in 1914 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders as a single weight. In 1967 Ed Benguit re-drew Souvenir for the Photo-Lettering Corporation, and when the International Typeface Corporation was formed in 1971 it issued his design as ITC Souvenir and then hired him to draw additional weights. Souvenir was hugely popular in the 1970s, and no doubt its overuse is the reason it is considered so distasteful. I can’t bring myself to use Souvenir but I do like the pattern it creates in the blue and yellow stacks of packaging. I can’t bring myself to eat Spam either—but that has nothing to do with the use of Souvenir.

6 March 20136 March 2013

Fraction

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Taking a shortcut to avoid the lights led me past this magnificent fraction, although it’s not really a fraction but a warehouse unit and street number. It’s the highlight in a pretty ordinary stretch of factories, a stretch that is particularly quiet on the weekend when everything is closed. But this number is lively at any time: it shouts ‘look at me look at me’. And indeed I did! I like the scale of it, and the spacing — and I don’t know if it’s a slash, a solidus or a virgule, but whatever you want to call that obtuse line, this one certainly makes a statement.

19 February 201317 February 2013

Asparagus

When I was 15 I got a job at the newly opened local Woolworths. Out the back, right next to the tea room, was a place that held enormous allure – the showcard and ticketwriting room. I started as a price chaser and made my way up the ranks to checkout chick, but neither job held the mystery and fascination of ticketwriting. I wondered if I could learn that secret writing style, but I never did. These days you don’t see it around so much, but one of my local grocers displays this fine example. It reminds me of a time, and I am pleased it is a skill that has not disappeared completely.

13 February 20139 February 2013

Nuts and mutton

An en dash is used to connect two things or denote a range, for example dates (13–14 June), places (Sydney–Hobart) and pages (22–33). An en dash is approximately the width of a lowercase n, and is also referred to as a nut dash. An em dash indicates a transition — or added emphasis — within a sentence — or an afterthought. An em dash can replace commas, semicolons, colons and parentheses to indicate an interruption or change of thought. An em dash is approximately the width of an uppercase M and is also known as a mutton dash.

4 February 20134 February 2013

Cobargo

Cobargo is a village on the south coast of New South Wales with a population of less than 500 people. It was settled in the 1820s when graziers moved stock into the area and by 1871 there was a school, post office, store, hotel, church and blacksmith shop, and by the 1890s the town even had its own newspaper. A branch of the Bank of New South Wales opened in 1903, and in 1917 operated from its new office on the corner of Bermagui Road until it closed in 1997. The Cobargo streetscape features beautiful turn-of-the-century buildings, many now occupied by local artisans, but it seems most fortuitous that a brewing supplier should occupy the bank building, where they have made excellent use of the existing sign.