The beautiful fitch work of Dusty Signs. Makes me want to go back to signwriter school and practice my ABC’s.
And here, as promised is the incredible Why Not Associates project.
From the project website…
Created by artist Gordon Young, with typography by Why Not Associates, the Comedy Carpet is a celebration of comedy on an extraordinary scale. Referring to the work of more than 1,000 comedians and comedy writers, the carpet gives visual form to jokes, songs and catchphrases dating from the early days of variety to the present. Sited in front of Blackpool Tower, the 2,200m2 work of art contains over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete, pushing the boundaries of public art and typography to their limits.
This is a brief post as a preamble to the next… the image shown is a project I completed with the team at Büro North and it was a lot of fun to work on. Stainless steel lettering, router cut in the typeface Replica was embedded in poured concrete at various entrances to the new Westfield in Sydney. The quotes are heritage interpretations, drawn from the site’s rich history, drawing connections to the surrounds and telling important stories. We looked very much to the work of WhyNot Associates for inspiration, and I have the utmost respect and admiration for the architectural and heritage interpretation work they completed over the years. Their new project (to follow) is an absolute gem, and I would say is the finest they have completed to date.
Building an impressive body of work over the last 10 years, Finish born Sanna Kannisto embeds herself and her studio in the environment in order to shoot stunning animal and botanical photography. See more at her site here.
Lovely Pic of the original Volkswagen Logo Specifications care of AisleOne, it nails the 3 ‘S’s… Symmetry, smarts and classically modern style.
“I love looking at logo specs like this one for the VW logo, which is one of my favorite marks. It gives you some insight into how the logo was created. Graham Smith took the time to recreate this sheet into a downloaded file.
Other personal favorites include the specs for the 1976 Montreal Olympics logo, and the Braun logo.”
Greatness from Armin Hofmann for the Basel School of Design (Basel Allgemeine Gewerbeschule) in the late ’50s early ’60s. I’m not sure exactly when it was designed but the school was built in 1961 by architect Hermann Baur. Found in the 80Magazine Pool
(via WANKEN - The Blog of Shelby White » Concrete Basel School of Design)
Awesome pics from the engaging travel blog of our friends Gabe & Anna of Observatorium Books.
I really don’t know what was going on here. These were all just sitting in the street, and we couldn’t tell who they belonged to.
[Click for ginormous]
My old typography lecturer Stephen Banham of Letterbox Studio has been a champion of local identity, branding and typography in the built form for years now and he inspired me to adopt a similar fanatical passion. Publishing typo zines under the banner of ‘Character’ for a number of years and has now pulled together a kind of a best of in the form of a lovely hard back book. Out through Thames & Hudson the book takes an in depth look at Melbourne’s typographic icons and tells the many stories behind them. Ours is in the post!
Sign Monkeys
Another post on the retro signage theme courtesy of printmag…
In the 1930s (and before and after) men who repaired the mammoth illuminated signs, known as spectaculars, that towered over places like Times Square were called “sign monkeys.” A term of endearment then, it is out of fashion now. Yet it does not diminish the dangerous work that these urban mountaineers (including window washers, bridge maintainers and other such laborers) must endure. Here is a film produced by Chevrolet that pays tribute to them. It is one thing to design something that humungous, another to make it work.
The Mies van der Rohe Society celebrated the architect’s 125th birthday on March 28th, 2011. On hand was Michael Jefferson of Wright auction house to present a history of the Barcelona chair and some perspective on Mies’ furniture at auction. Talking about the $ value of design classics is pretty stuffy stuff. But the history and the insights offered here are really quite interesting.
