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Commentary

Painted Type

Tom Dolan on November 5, 2005

Great piece in The New York Times (free subscription required), on the death of hand-painted wall-sized signage, like this beauty, in the Bronx.

10 Responses to “Painted Type”

  1. 2nd link doesn’t work for me (“forbidden”).

  2. Tom Dolan says:

    Sorry, typo, should be good now.

  3. Ray Fenwick says:

    If you love wall size stuff, you’ll definitely like this building size stuff in Winnipeg, Canada. Definitely worth an eloquent eulogy, or at least a moment of silence.

  4. Hrant says:

    Funny, this: “Landlords, sniffing revivals …” I guess one man’s desecration is another mans’s revival, and vice versa – both within type and without.

    hhp

  5. Tom Dolan says:

    Truer words are hard to speak Hrant. On a side note, my current office neighbor has an antique painted brick wall as one of the interior walls of his loft office space (in Pasadena, CA). Quite lovely, and nice to know the landlords actually recognized it as such.

  6. geoff says:

    Wow! Someone else likes the old painted buildings in Winnipeg. Sadly, I’m still stuck here.

  7. J Coleclough says:

    This example is from Reading, UK:

    I particularly like the way that the quotation marks have been treated:

  8. I was in Winnipeg this year, and was struck by the number of these old buildings and signage still intact. Interestingly the ‘Peg’s Red River College is a new construction built in/around 2 older buildings. While getting a tour of the college we found ourselves in a wonderful glass room (a drawing studio, with just amazing light) and we turned to see that the interior brick wall used to be an exterior wall, and still had one of these old signs painted on it. We (a group of designers) exclaimed with delight, and complimented the [Director?] on this brilliant piece of preservation for an art college. He looked surprised and said, “Really? We wanted it stripped and painted white; I don’t know why the contractors didn’t do that.”

    Perhaps Winnipeg’s building contractors have more sense than art school administrators.

  9. Hrant says:

    There’s a fast food restaurant in Thessaloniki, Greece that sort of bumped into an ancient brick wall… and decided to “go glass” and incoporate it into the design. It looks fabulous.

    hhp

  10. Dystopos says:

    Here are three Alabama examples from my Flickr collection:

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Typographica is a review of typefaces and type books, with occasional commentary on fonts and typographic design. Edited by Stephen Coles, also of Fonts In Use and The Mid-Century Modernist.

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