…place: London #2

A WANDER AROUND ST.PAUL’S, SOUTH ALONG THE RIVER & QUEENS PARK

The second installment of an epic meander through the capital in September…

Starting in Carter Lane, just south of St.Paul’s at what is now a rather down-at-heel YMCA in a spectacularly decorated and sadly dilapidated state. This building, once the choir boys school, is liberally covered in lettering and decoration in a technique called ‘sgrafitto’ where layers of coloured plaster are spread over each other, and the top layer is scraped away to reveal the colour beneath. Water damage has made some probably irreversible damage to this delicate plasterwork. Grrr.

The building is also adorned with other decorative features too like this corner plaque at the rear, where the building joins the old Deanery which needs to be tried for crimes against setting copperplate script in all caps!

On the way through Cheapside we found this marble slab with some pretty uninspiring typography:

Wordsworth would probably spin in his grave if he saw just how a poor choice of typeface could reduce a poem to just words in stone…

Across the river, on Shad Thames some pretty nasty kerning was found… 

But was all redeemed after a couple of pints in The Rake near Blows yard…

Followed by more pints in a variety of establishments along the river…

And some excellent noodles at Cha Cha Moon, with its elegant typography and nimble neon sign…

There were other places after that, but much of that is now strangely lost to me.

The following morning after a hearty fried breakfast we wandered the streets of NW6 and found some items of interest…

And at the point at which I could take no more Helvetica, I spotted this elegant handwritten note alongside some more. I sincerely hope that you are only getting your own mail now, Janette.

So what’s in your neighbourhood?

I am putting out a request for contributors for the “my type of… place” section of this blog and would like you to put together your own typographic tour. If you are interested, download the contributors information sheet for more details, ideas and specifications here.

…place: Paris

BY GLENN ADAMS

As a small town boy from the east of England with roots in east London, visiting cities have always been the norm for me, so a trip to Paris to celebrate my first anniversary with my girlfriend Kim seemed like an opportunity to take plenty of “touristy” photos and soak up the romantic atmosphere.

 

From the second we arrived it was love for both of us taking morning walks down the banks of the Seine (granted it was October so it was a tad chilly) and browsing the small boutique shops of the latin quarter.

What really grabbed me for the whole of my stay was the underground graffiti art of Paris. Using conventional spray and stencil work with prints and graphics the results are unique and always eye catching.

 All cities have their own underground art scene each with its own feel and style but the Parisian style is truly something else.

I had fallen in love with this Paris that mixes English and French to express the new, making you feel like one of the cool kids being invited.

The biggest embodiment I found of this was in Rue Saint-Honoré in a store called Colette, literally selling everything you need to impress and burn a few hundred euros. It wasn’t the shop that impressed me though, but what was on the side of the building, a white garage door with simple blue spray paint that somehow made me stop in my tracks.

 

LINKS
http://www.glennadamsphotography.co.uk/

Many thanks for your observations Glenn – it’s great to see how other people pick up on the style of cities and think that this offers another viewpoint of this over photographed city! And best wishes to you and Kim!

So what’s in your neighbourhood?

I am putting out a request for contributors for the “my type of… place” section of this blog and would like you to put together your own typographic tour. If you are interested, download the contributors information sheet for more details, ideas and specifications here.

…place: London #1

A WANDER AROUND FARRINGDON, CLERKENWELL & THE BARBICAN

Its great heading into London for mooch around with like-minded friends. This is part 1 of a long meander, but where better to start than this defunct art supplies shop, still displaying fading adverts for Letraset, Mecanorma and other relics of a bygone age… aah!

I love the juxtaposition of the designer Helvetica sign alongside the original ‘Girls & Infants’ stonework – I’m sure this has been positioned here deliberately!

Around the corner is the old Clerkenwell  Workshops building, now very much a mixed used space, but still proudly displaying its origins

And the subtly cropped Helvetica of one of the areas top design studios…

The best three kings… ever!

The elegance of this whitewashed arch, complete with decorative quoin and understated lettercarving is in stark contrast to the suggestion of the wittily altered street sign!

Above, a very large and bizarre looking number – reminds me of poor quality graffiti!

Whilst below is a more traditional sign with a curiously upside down final letter!

St. John Street has a number of fine architectural details, many of which all relate to the original of the St.John’s Ambulance organisation.

As you wander around, there are legacies of previous uses that have been retained more subtly, and others that are probably some of the deepest carvings around.

And so we get to the ‘love it or loath it’ monolith of the Barbican. I have always had a sneaky admiration for brutalist urban town planning – although much of them never lasted beyond 20 years before they were considered worse than the car parks of the same era!

Somehow, this place has worked. Yes, it’s not pretty, and yes, lots of Londoners and foreigners hate it too, but there’s no denying it works. These places are highly sought after, and for the typographer they retain much of their original Helvetica signage:

Although much of what has been retained has been abused – is that a Gill Sans ‘a’? Wall Side or Wallside? And is that ‘s’ upside down too?

At this point it was raining hard, and coffee had become a necessity, so I’ll leave you with a reflection as well made our way towards St.Pauls…

…place: Eton

It is a place mostly associated with elite education, privilege and money. It also is pretty good for the urban typography spotter too.  Up the High Street is the town chemist (by Royal Appointment to the House of Windsor too) with its peeling paint and 1970′s illuminated sign above:

There are a couple of old style post boxes in very good condition, one with its removable direction sign – I believe that this is a ‘Type B Edward VIII Model from 1936. Further along is this 1856 Fluted Pillarbox with its vertical slot and rain guard! Apparently quite rare these days!

Although not everything old has been lovingly preserved like this beautifully decaying stand off sign high above street level:

And this metal wall sign on the local garage:

Obviously, there are some lovely old buildings with fine architectural detailing, including these curiously affixed numbers above and the discreet but elegant hand painted labelling of the College buildings which can be found at almost every turn:

And where they are not black on white, they are white on black:

In front of the imposing College Chapel stands a WW2 memorial featuring a a fragment of verse by Old Etonian Thomas Grey, with uncomfortably spaced swash capitals…

Back in the town, the Ex-Servicemen’s club makes a bold statement,

whilst above it, set into a blank window feature is this white stone dedication:

Whilst I couldn’t suppress a childish snigger at the school in his name…

And never walk past a hostelry with your name on it:

LINKS
Eton College
Historic Post Boxes

Eton has some very fine examples of urban typography and is a great place to wander about with a camera.

So what’s in your neighbourhood?

I am putting out a request for contributors for the “my type of… place” section of this blog and would like you to put together your own typographic tour. If you are interested, download the contributors information sheet for more details, ideas and specifications here.

…place: Bracknell, Berkshire

Bracknell town centre is largely given over to a pedestrianised civic area built in the 1960′s and is showing it’s age. I bet it was really smart in it’s heyday, but now, like most medium towns, it is in need of some re-investment. I thought I’d capture someting of the signage whilst I was there:

But it is inbetween the shops where something begins to emerge – entrances to the offices and spaces above the ground floor shops – these dot each stretch of shops and lay mostly unnoticed by the local populace…

LINKS
Backnell Wikipedia
Bracknell Town Centre

I quite liked Bracknell – I have a strange admiration for those concrete town planning schemes of the era, even though the reality never quite lived up to the ideal…

So what’s in your neighbourhood?

I am putting out a request for contributors for the “my type of… place” section of this blog and would like you to put together your own typographic tour. If you are interested, download the contributors information sheet for more details, ideas and specifications here.

…place: Hunstanton

It’s the holiday season in good old blighty and what better way to celebrate by taking a look at off-season Hunstanton in north Norfolk.

I love this place. It is my nearest resort (about 15 miles away) and spend lots of time at the beach and in the town, and consume a rather fulsome amount of fish’n'chips! Sunny Hunny as it is affectionately known is a thriving seaside town, unlike many others which become ghost towns during the winter months, but its fairground holiday entertainments must inevitably close up for the off-season.

I must confess to a liking of seaside towns in the off-season. There is something sad and desolate about these places that for most people hold strong memories of long-gone summer holidays. It is a little like a forest in winter, bare, fragile and exposed, waiting for the first signs of spring so that it can burst into life once more. 

Thes images were taken late morning on 2nd January this year during a long walk to blow away some of the festive lethargy that had settled.

I will be back in Hunny soon with more summery images!

…place: Sheffield #2

London Road snakes southwards out of Sheffield town centre for about two miles. The majority of these images were taken in the first ¼ mile and the environs nearby, known locally as ‘the bottom of London Road.’ I always liked it around here. I had some mates who lived nearby, and there used to be some great pubs  – this used to be one of the best pub crawls in Sheffield on a Friday and Saturday night, but many have long since been converted into other things or stand silently watching the passing traffic, their weathered boards coated in many seasons of flaking flyposters.

Taken from an adjoining road from the rear of The Old Crown, high up above the neighbouring buildings is this plasterwork sign for the once mighty Sheffield brewer Ward’s. I imagine this would have also been brightly painted at one time.

The frontage seems to have been become infected with ”creeping signitis”

The plaster sign on the other gable end was still visible but had been usurped by a newer neighbour, whose falling tiles and attractive window decoration looked rather ironic beside the Old Crown…

At the Highfield area I spotted these two post office signs competing with each other, doing an excellent job of hiding the old street sign which had helpfully been painted the same colour as the wall!

Across the road, these two signs are really showing their age.

The dentists also still retained the original gilt signwritten names above the door.

Nearby, this little old fellow caught my eye amongst the general garish signage.

I thought I would show the surrounding buildings for context so took a wider shot. It is at the right of the image below, just above the white van…

But if you look at the wall above the Chinese restaurant sign you will see this:

Older signage, painted over still older signage, still holding its own amongst the plastic and neon of the twenty-first century!

There is a lot of this about – retaining the old street signs, but painting over them. Odd, but nice that they are there to be spotted by the more observant. This one is on the corner of a side street, above this ‘Gentlemans Outfitters’ which I was very pleased to see was still in business and had not updated its 1960′s signage.

At the very bottom of London Road, there is a small car park whose adjoining buildings have been subjected to some neat graffiti…

Opposite, once stood an iconic Sheffield landmark building – ‘The Locarno.’ Well, actually, if the truth be told, it is still there. Kind of. Situated on what has become prime real estate, this old nightclub could not be actually demolished because of its listed facade. So what did they do? Built an ugly, characterless block of student flats behind it and shoe-horned a supermarket behind its beautiful grey and white tiled facade. The mind boggles.

As I was crossing over to see if there were any signs or plaques that celebrated its past life (none) I noticed some much newer lettering up on the side of the building…

Which turned out to be some poetry by that old local fraud  pop star Jarvis Cocker for a poetry festival.

I just hope that the Pulp frontman is implicated at the trial for these crimes against typography… Still I bet they won’t be around for a century, unlike these regal fellows further up the road…

I began to wander down some side streets. There are a lot of old workshops and businesses amongst the housing estates that I thought might give me a few treats, and I wasn’t to be disappointed…

I am particularly pleased with this shot above, which encompasses cast iron, plaster and vinyl signage. And these two no parking signs just made me smile…

This building looks like it has seen better days, but had a lot of businesses still operating beneath its decaying sign, like this one, who still make type punches and the like. Excellent!

I ventured down John Street towards Bramall Lane (home of Sheffield United FC) to get a shot of The Cricketers Arms pub which I’d passed the day before.

I don’t hold out much hope for a full restoration of this building and wanted to record its lettering before it disappeared. Whilst I was here though, I was struck by the very odd juxtaposition of this pub – right across the road from the football stadium!

As I was heading back I ventured up Queens road, a very busy thoroughfare – five lanes in places – and at this point filled on both sides with superstores and DIY depots. At the lights I noticed this new furniture showroom and quickly pulled into the car park across the road to check if I what I had seen was true.

Surely, if the store had just opened, they could have put up a new banner. This looks like it was last used during the South Yorkshire hurricane season, but oddly, the rest of the store is all squeaky clean…

I was heading this way on a slight detour a little further around the corner on Broadfield Road; Heeley Baths! I lived in Heeley for the first 13 years of my life and this place holds many memories for me. 

We we all taught to swim here, and as children, great parties of us would walk here every saturday afternoon, with our trunks wrapped in our towels,  for some chlorine-soaked fun!

Sadly, the new signage does not really compare to the original…

Further on I pulled over and walked back to get a shot of this ghost sign, still gamely hanging on to its message…

place… Downham Market, Norfolk 2

A recent trip to Downham Market resulted in a good collection of typographic images; this is the second post I have made from this same trip. Above is a  French sign donated by their twin town.

I was a little disappointed in how little stone cut lettering there was. Maybe I’ll see more when I go next time.

I love the composition of these two signs, old and new.

This sign marks an alley between two buildings, barely wide enough for a person, let alone a horse, rampant or otherwise!

Some interesting(?) stained glass on a private house that fronts directly onto the street. I like the idea that this house may once have been a pub…

There are still some good examples of 1960′s and 70′s signage in Downham too, like this bike shop…

And Reeds department store has held onto its curved corner glass despite the trend to replace everything with flat plate glass and plastic. Up above the tall shop fascia, right in between two windows is mounted this little sign, looking oddly scorched.

Nothing like a bit of Art Deco to set the scene, and a prominent local hostelry does quite well on the lettering too, with it’s large black 3D name across the castellated roofline, as well as a painted ironwork archway in front of the door.

This sign seemed a little overly elaborate for what it is, but I guess its position directly across from the local primary school necessitates its visual extravagance. On the school (Clackclose)  itself I found these disappearing letters on one of the school gates. On the other side it read GIRLS, but that was almost invisible. I imagine there was once a boys entrance too, but I could not find it.

I also spotted this  neat trompe l’oeil in a bricked up first floor window.

My Fair Lady still proudly wears her outdated typography, whilst the SALE signs tacked up in the window look like they have seen much better days…

A little way down a very narrow alley with bars either end is this sign which obviously is left from an earlier period when the adjacent building had not been built.

Downham also has a ‘Posting Box’ too – very posh. Not far from here is a place I had forgotten existed:

I wanted to go in and get some more images but the lady inside looked exceptionally hostile. Taking heed of the sign above the door I reluctantly passed on, but not before taking this one through the window:

Near to the war memorial, high up on the gable end of a house is this small stone sign. Whilst on the memorial itself (very traditional, very poignant) is this sign:

Any particular persons? Or just persons in general? Is there a problem with persons getting on the memorial in Downham? Is this just a Health and Safety message in general? Perhaps we’ll never know…

There is a little 1970′s shopping precinct right in the town centre, and in the middle of a large expanse of beige brickwork I came across these two stones.

As I arrived back at the car park at the end of my visit I was greeted by a little typographic advertising. A fitting end.

…place: King’s Lynn #4

It’s a problem everywhere I know, but the thorny issue of parking is often overlooked by the over-zealous clampers, jobsworth ticket wardens and ludicrous flaunting of the rules by some. For me, parking is the natural habitat for the ubiquitous species “commodo operor non subsisto hic” or Common No Parking sign.

It is difficult for todays generation to believe that in the early part of the twentieth century this species was almost unknown on British shores. In a matter of less than a hundred years it has acclimatised itself remarkably well, adapting to an increasingly more visually aggressive environment, establishing territories of astonishing magnitude.

In some places, like this one above, these signs have learned to roost together, finding safety in numbers but this has led to interbreeding with some alarming mutations.

This specimen is obviously the offspring of the union between a No Parking sign and company sign; a less than handsome example, but one that displays the aggressive corporate elements that can dominate the plumage.

Others, like this one above have bred with less aggressive signs that actually help the No Parking sign with a supporting display.

One of the main characteristics of the urban No Parking sign is it’s almost compulsive habit of establishing it’s territory in the most inhospitable places, with few prominent features and no natural resources.

Like pigeons, shabby, disfigured or lame No Parking signs can often be found in urban areas, desperately hanging onto their meagre territory.

These specimens were taken in a limited area surrounding a Local Authority approved and maintained reserve where twenty-seven different species were identified, tagged and recorded as part of the King’s Lynn No Parking census 2010.

This is one of an old species that has not managed to successfully pass its genes on through interbreeding. Very few of these elegant and authorititve signs remain in the world, and sightings in the UK are becoming increasingly rare.

These last few show how the species has adapted to the local environments. These are unique to very small areas and these specimens are displaying the unique camouflage that besets them when they reach maturity; signalling their readiness to mate and continue the cycle.

LINKS
Map of Area covered

Sheffield #1

Wybourn, Attercliffe, Carbrook

On a recent visit to Sheffield I needed to pick up Mrs. Lestaret from Meadowhall and took the opportunity to get a few images of an area of Sheffield that has undergone a radical transformation in the last thirty years.

I’ll begin in Attercliffe, originally a hamlet mentioned in the Doomsday book, once a thriving rural community famed for it’s orchards, but becoming a highly industrialised suburb of Sheffield by the nineteenth century, taking advantage of the proximity of the River Don to capitalise upon the City’s cutlery trade.

Nowadays, the area is very run down, with little of the industry that once was, although there was plenty of enterprise evident as you will see. John Banners department store has been a major landmark here since the late 1920′s and was the first store to have escalators, and a system of suction tubes to move cash around the store!

Alas, Banners is no longer, but the building has been fitted out and is now home to variety of small businesses. Across the road, are a number of eateries that also tell of the history of the area and it’s large Asian community.

If this place is called Kurrylicious, I ask why it needs a second sign declaring that it is now serving the food that it is named after? I love this!

There are also quite a few shops that are now home to  a growing number of slab-fronted ‘businesses’ like this one. Is the lower sign a direction or an instruction?

There is even a place to park up for your hanky panky! What will they think of next!

Just off Attercliffe Road stands an imposing Victorian red brick building, once a chapel, now a mosque.

On the base of the building there are five foundation stones!

A little further on and down a little side street is the sorry shell of the old Adelphi Cinema:

Sheffield once boasted over 70 cinemas, some grand, some less so, but almost all gone.

The Adelphi had also been a bingo hall and social club, as well as a nightclub at some point, when this neon sign would have been a beacon for dancing, Ward’s Best Bitter and the occasional fisticuff!

On the side of the building was this faded sign.  I wonder if this was put up to warn motorists about the sozzled late-night clientelle or the old biddies leaving after a few ‘eyes down.’

Right next door was this reclaimed estate agents sign. So is it Let, or To Let?

As you travel further away from the city centre, Attercliffe gives way to Carbrook. This area was once filled with steel foundries and associated industries. The real heart of the ‘Steel City.’ There are few remaining steel mills left here which makes the Forgemasters site even more imposing as it is now surrounded by Lilliputian ‘business units’ and retail parks.

In fact the area has been rebranded in recent years and been given a cringeworthy name that I cannot bring myself to say out loud. Or type for that matter. Let’s leave it at that.

Of the few old buildings that survive amidst the redevelopment, most have lost their original purpose. The Pheasant is soon to be another Indian restaurant – I hope that they don’t cover up the old sign.

Now back down into Atterclife, and right next door to the Adelphi – you can only see this as you travel back towards the town. Above the plate glass and acrylic facade (and boarded up) is this beautiful tiled building with it’s original Burtons sign! 

It’s really satisfying to see these old signs still hanging on in there, but equally depressing are the signs that are not holding up so well, like these on the Don Valley Stadium, built in 1991 to host the World Student Games. The temporariness of these signs is in stark contrast to the more structurally designed ones we have been looking at.

As I was taking this shot I decided to walk around the block, just to see if there was anything of interest out of eyesight, and was struck by this sign on the grass in front of a huge shed that now houses a paper shredding company. Danger? Of what? A camouflaged elephant trap?

And on the way home I felt the need to stop and get a shot of this building on the edge of the Wybourn estate. Ghost sign over ghost sign. Now that’s a haunting!

LINKS
Sheffield Forum Attercliffe
List of Sheffield Cinemas
Wikipedia Sheffield
World Student Games
Shefield Indexers – Banners

It was great to get back into the area that helped give Sheffield it’s Steel City name. I visited a few more areas too, and have more images of typographic Sheffield to share soon.

So what’s in your neighbourhood?

I am putting out a request for contributors for the “my type of… place” section of this blog and would like you to put together your own typographic tour. If you are interested, download the contributors information sheet for more details, ideas and specifications here.