For Signage Chumps

Thanks for the reference, Stephen. As an Honorary Signage Chump of Her Majesty's Highest, Highest, Royal Order, I'd say that this first image:

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... is not Centaur. It's Bembo.

Oh, the Brits! They can be so Monotypish. I shall look no more at jpgs tonight. I'm heading for Oregon in the morning. (The ghost of Llloyd Reynolds makes an appearance early every summer, and I don't want to miss out.)

A special wink to the Felt Hatters of Portland. They always know a Bruce Rogers face when they see it.

Funny that they messed up on Bembo. Bembo and Gill Sans are used for just about everything at the British Library from signage down to the little slips for requesting photocopying. It was the first thing I noticed when I got my reading card, back when the library was at the British Museum. It was like entering some great domed conservatory of Very British Typography.

Speaking of the British Museum, there is some very entertaining lettering in the new Great Court. Michael Harvey told me who did it, but I can't remember the name. Anyway, it's Rotis with slightly flared stems. Considerably nicer to look at than Rotis itself. Still not nice per se.

JosÈ Mendoza y Almeida has a face called Pascal that has the same lc "a", as well as a certain stroke stress similarity. Was that it? (And it actually precedes Rotis, which doesn't mean it inspired it, and just maybe even the other way around, from a careful reading of Aicher's "Typographia".) BTW, I know this stuff because... I'm a Rotis fan! :-)

No, this was definitely Rotis as interpreted by a lettercutter. That lowercase c is, as far as I know, unique and certainly unmistakable.

I'm not a Rotis fan, but it's not like Hrant and I need anything else to disagree about.

I've just noticed that there are samples of the new BM lettering included in Phil Baines' London lettering walk

My favorite critique: "In addition to the quantity of these signs some of the pictograms are far from clear. What does a person waving an arm up and down mean?"