Letters from 2013

Unblogged signage and assorted typographic encounters from the last year. (Still trying to wrap up 2013.)

Spelling debacle on the contents page of Bloomberg Businessweek.

Click image to enlarge

I stood in awe before these sample alphabets by an early 20th Century sign painter, offered by Ricco Maresca at last year's Metro Show. This year's show  is in a couple of weeks. Here's another grid of alphabets from the same series.

Vintage record carrier

Papel picado with the names of the bride and groom festooned the pre-wedding fiesta, just north of the border.

The Elkhorn Saloon's claim to fame is that it is the second-longest operating bar in California. The humble, historic watering hole has been serving drinks in San Miguel continuously since 1853.

A visit to the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market on 39th St., followed by
one to the Cupcake Cafe.

I must visit Baltimore again when it's not blistering hot.

Colonoscopy humor? This evacuation-route map was posted in my gastroenterologist's office.

Works by Christopher Wool at the Guggenheim. Show closes January 22nd.

Driving through Maine

Cornell in early June. Ithaca was at its finest--rainy and lush. New, since my college days, are the safety nets now flanking bridges that cross the gorges.

On Thanksgiving morning, the clowns meet up at 81st St. and Central Park West to "Join the Parade!"

Instead of apologizing for in-store construction with "Pardon our appearance," Bergdorf Goodman tunes into their customer base with "We're Having a Little Work Done …"

The Magritte show at MoMA, which just closed, was filled with the surrealist's enigmatic use of words, carefully lettered. MoMA senior designer, Sabine Dowek, describes how she arrived at her design for the wall lettering here. 

Robert Indiana

EAT (top): Farnsworth Museum, Rockport, Maine

EAT, LOVE: Whitney Museum show

California Creeping

It’s just a matter of time till I get pulled over for DWP, that’s ‘Driving While Photographing,' which is what I was doing the other day in LA highway traffic. In my defense, I was only doing 5 mph and what else was I supposed to do for 1½ hours? Next time, I’ll know to bring my Tolstoy-on-tape CDs. And a tip to East Coasters--rush hour around Los Angeles starts at 3:00 (local time). Apparently, 7-3 is a popular enough shift to cause full-fledged bumper-to-bumper standstill.

Letters from Helsinki

So this is a bit like sending a postcard after you’re already home, but for some reason, editing, imaging, and posting of photos during my recent trip to Helsinki just didn’t happen quite the way it did when I was in Berlin. 

While there was plenty of mid-century typography, there was a good amount of art nouveau style lettering, in keeping with the surprising amount of Jugendstil architecture to be found throughout city.

Keep these in mind when shopping for the carnivore who has everything.

Street names in Helsinki are posted in Finnish and Swedish.

Much thanks to whoever was responsible for this post office signage.

This was the carpet in the Hotel Klaus K.

While the words in Finland seemed ridiculously long to these American eyes, it was in Sweden that I spotted the awning, below, with the 28-character word.

According to the Google translation, “INGENIORSVETENSKAPSAKADEMIEN” means  “Engineering Sciences” which is even a mouthful in English. In Swedish, it’s one word plus 50% more characters.