Signs
Towards the end of the trip I started trying to take a photo of a street sign in each country, since they're wonderfully different in each place. The Roman sign I found sat alongside window shutters and was chiselled in marble in a classical all-caps serif typeface.
Typographic factoid: it's believed that the origin of the serif lies in the techniques used to carve letters into stone in ancient Rome. (more background at Wikipedia)
This sign from somewhere in Barcelona also looks like it might be chiselled into marble, but this time it's a fairly utilitarian sans-serif. It's also hemmed in by a sea of cables, which is fairly typical of Barcelona's ad-hoc building style.
Posted on Friday, January 12, 2007 and filed under Europe 2006-2007.
Comments
The serif comes from the days of chiselling stone tablets, right?
They just neatened off the lines with a single blow...Well, that's kinda what we were lead to believe in design school.
Hey Si, I gotta send you an email about the Volume installation...Love it, gonna use it as inspiration for the next FFC website if I can pull it off.
Posted by: Dan on January 13, 2007
