Traveling Type Nerds Check Out Signs

My husband and I freely admit to being a couple of type nerds. Other people just read signs on commercial buildings; we check out type styles on signs. Is the type interesting, attractive, and well suited to the business? Some type is; some isn’t.

So many typefaces on signs now are bland and generic, the inevitable plain sans serifs. While readable (a good thing), these Helvetica clones can be boring. It’s like going to an ice cream shop with 98 flavors and choosing vanilla.

Still, if you keep your eyes open when you travel, you’ll see fascinating signs. There are old signs (see the top of this blog) and new ones (see below). Newer signs sometimes mingle type styles, as in the awning for this tavern. Just looking at the type on the sign makes you feel like it’s a hip, trendy place to hang out.


Other signs use specially designed letters to create a certain mood. This cafe sign, spotlighted in neon, has a modern, fun look. You’d expect the food to be innovative and tasty just by looking at the type on the sign.


On the other hand, this sign for a restaurant/tavern along the river in a small town seems to have missed the boat, to use a bad pun. For a restaurant located in a historic district with a pretty river setting, you’d expect a sign with old-time lettering like steamboat jig work. Instead this sign makes you feel that food here may be ordinary at best.


Using the right type on a sign can make customers feel good about shopping at a business without knowing why. But using the wrong type can jolt or confuse people.

It’s hard to go wrong with a classic, as this bookstore sign shows. Using Roman style capitals similar to Hadriano Stonecut, this sign makes you feel that there’s good reading inside the door. There’s a literary feel, an understated elegance, that says a booklover would enjoy this place.


In the other hand, the used auto business sign below uses Old English in glaring red and black. That might be perfect for a medieval pub, but really doesn’t fit with the sleek modern image of cars.


The sign for old fashioned donuts below has letters that are appropriately fat and round. Can you imagine a donut shop sign with skinny, stick-like letters, and would you go there? Donuts are a simple pleasure, and this sign is simple too, but with a flair that says old time bakery.


Unfortunately, this sign for a nail salon shows no hint of upscale femininity. The thick, clunky type, a computer-fattened takeoff on Art Deco, makes you feel like your nails will weigh a thousand pounds when you leave.


Similarly this sign for a Chinese restaurant is a study in confusion. The garish red and green awning has distorted textlike letters that almost defy description. It makes you wonder what kind of strange Oriental food you will encounter within.


A perfect example of type used in the right way is this sign for a music store. The Celtic style type makes the storefront distinctive. You can almost hear the sound of the harps and pipes and see the Irish dancers.


Being a traveling type nerd is fun. All it takes is a little observation. How does a sign make you feel about the business it represents? What good and bad examples of type usage on signs have you seen?

A Letterpress Card Tradition Continues

There’s something special about a letterpress holiday card! Over the years my husband and I have printed many of them. In the earliest years of our marriage, we didn’t have a printing press — but once we got one, letterpress Xmas cards became the norm for us. Hand-printed letterpress Xmas cards take a lot of work, but they’re worth it. It’s so satisfying to create a personalized greeting and exercise your creativity at the same time!

Each year we come up with a different holiday card idea. Below are a few examples. A few others are shown in earlier posts on this blog, including “My Favorite Typefaces” (June) and “How I Design a Printed Piece” (October).

We started simply. Our 1985 holiday card was printed from a single cut, then decorated with colored pencils. We kept the inside blank so we could write personal notes to family and friends.


Our card from 1991 used two color Della Robbia initials and Caslon to define “enjoy”. The inside was printed in Caslon Italic. This card needed the green “ENJOY” on the front to be in just the right place. We had to feed the C&P carefully to make sure the paper was straight, and thankfully only messed up a few.





A little later we got some uncial types, and happily incorporated them into the Xmas card below. “Season’s Greetings” on the front of the card was done in Goudy Text with red Missal initials and a holly border. The inside message was printed with Solemnis and Libra, our newly acquired uncials. We also had some fun with the Goudy paragraph markers (little leaves) throughout.





In the quest for something different, we printed a “Deck the Halls” card using some older typefaces. The front of the card featured Crawford Medium and Old English, interspersed with two color holly border (notice the little red berries). Three colors on the front meant three times through the press. Inside we used Ray Shaded (an old 19th century typeface) to print “Fa-la-la”, plus Libra to sign our names.





Looking for new ideas, we printed some of our many little Xmas cuts in the shape of a tree. It was harder than it looked because some of the cuts were old and worn, especially the girl in the sunbonnet just below the red Santa Claus. We tried for red berries with the green holly again, this time as part of the tree base on the front. The type inside the card is Crayonette, a recasting of an old 19th century face. We found the Xmas tree cut in an antique store in Delavan, Wisconsin. It looked old judging by the candles on the tree.





One of our more unusual holiday cards involved a very bad pun. “Muletide Greetings” was printed in Old English on the outside, with Freehand added on the interior. We used that hard-to-print multicolor wreath we’d inherited from my father, and thankfully we had a couple of cuts of mules. This card got more comments from family and friends than most, and we certainly had a great time creating it. See how much fun printing your own holiday cards can be!