Old Signage Type

I was recently in York, when I made a note of a lot of the old decorative signage that's dotted about the city. What I've seen is totally relevant to my type journal, however due to the nature of the type it's going to difficult to categorise and and recognise some of the fonts.

Unknown hand painted typographic sign.

This is Gill Sans, which is fluent throughout the national railway; for me Gill Sans is the essence of British Typography, purely because of so it's so many uses throughout British culture including: The BBC, National Rail & The London Underground, Penguin Books. Even the government have been known to use it:

Name: Gill Sans
Released: 1926
Designer: Eric Gill
Style: Gothic
Classification: Humanist
Suggested Origin: Lead

Whether these hand painted typographic signs are old as they suggest is unknown to me, still it's a beautiful piece of art. Again, Gill Sans is among the selection.

Again with the age of the signs it's difficult to pinpoint a specific typeface, they're still relevant to my practice though and it helps me appreciate that the media a Type is represented in can be equally as impressive as the Type itself.

An Interview with Erik Spiekermann

Here's a great interview I've spotted with Erik Spiekermann on a couple of his thoughts about some of the issues that come with being a Type Designer; there's a quote in there that I really love:

"All my Typefaces have been designed for a specific purpose, either a project or a client or a situation, you know Meta was first designed for small type on forms and paper way back in the 80s, but I can't stop anyone using it as a large poster or on a bilboard. More often than not I am totally pleasantly surprised how good it may look, not because I designed such an incredible typeface, but because somebody has the guts; I would never do it, but if you're good at it, you can take something out of it's context and put it into a new context, somebody doesn't care what Spiekermann thought, because you know if you design a typeface it's very much like writing a pop song, you can't stop anybody from singing it in their bathroom out of tune, it's a pop song, it's out there, it's popular. And when you design a popular typeface, I should always feel flattered when people even use it in the first place."

That's a really great metaphor he uses there. 

I'm going to anaylse Meta as part of my Type Journal:

Name: FF Meta
Released: 1991
Designer: Erik Spiekermann
Style: Gothic
Classification: Humanist
Suggested Origin: Lead

Concept Workshop

Today we had to present our group-work that we did over the weekend on conceptual thinking. We were given the task of working together to come up with a solution to either a bar, hotel or restaurant. Whatever we chose, it had to be clear that there was a well informed concept behind the work. This really helped my get thinking about different ways you could approach design, and it really assisted me in understanding that more often than not, conceptual work is often the best, it sets the bar for design with meaning. Because at the end of the day, if something is purely aesthetic, people won't tend to remember it as much.

As a group we chose a bar, and after spitballing a few potential ideas we decided on going with the concept or theme of 'perspective', which we also proposed as the name. Our intentions we to design a space that people could experience as a place that question everyday things, through the theories of optical illusion, whether through the medium of colour, viewpoint, morphism etc. Some of the key defining features we came up with included a bar that looks different lengths, glasses that paired up with placemats that provided a colour filter that changed the way you saw an image, sculptures that hung from the ceilings that made up typography when viewed from a certain viewpoint (like the entrance) but looked like random artwork from anywhere else.

As part of our inspiration, I suggested the group looks at Hans Holbein's work 'The Ambassadors', this was the point of view I was trying to get across, that things can be perceived differently from different points of view. Here's the painting, notice the way the skull looks different from a different viewpoints:

Ice Cream Brands

For the final part of my dessert inspired project, I want to brand an imaginary Ice Cream Parlour chain. This last brief was to be problem inspired, from something that arose from our earlier research, and I saw this opportunity as I saw a gap in the market for a national chain of ice cream shops/parlours. I guess it's because it gets really cold in the UK throughout the winter months and people aren't as interested in summer foods. However I personally love Ice Cream all year round, and after chatting with peers they agree there is a bit of a hole in this market.

I'm briefly looking at brands that are of a similar nature, so I've got some idea of what angle I could come from. I already have a couple of ideas in terms of style, and I'm thinking a minimal solution could be appropriate here. Here are a couple of things that I've researched in order to better understand the things that already exist:

Daria mentioned a Portuguese brand of Ice Cream call Santini, which is fluent throughout Portugal: here's a look at their website, which I'm impressed with, I like the minimal yet sophisticated design:

This is the kind of thing I'm striving to design. The first thing I want to think of though is a concept, something I can apply to the chain. Once I get this sorted I imagine it will inform all the rest of the design elements, like the logo, the name, the stationary etc.

Here are other Ice Cream brands that aren't (inter)nationally recognised as a places you can go to sit down for an ice cream, but they represent the subject:

 

It's also worth mentioning English Lakes Ice Cream, they're a brand of organic Ice Cream from Cumbria. I'm not biased or anything but they make some of the best Ice Cream I've tried. Anyway, the point is that you can go to most built up places in the Lake District and the chances are there'll be a place that sell it. However, only in cafes and restaurants etc. they don't have their own parlours, again this reflects the gap in the market that I propose my brand will fill. Here's the website, it's not great in terms of design, but that can be forgiven due to their delicious ice cream. By the way my favourite flavour that they make is Thunder & Lightning™ which can be described as 'an explosive mix of chocolate and cinder toffee'.