Terrible (=really great!) Street Lettering

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Scott-Martin Kosofsky
Scott-Martin Kosofsky Posts: 429
in Lettering Critiques

This photo was published today in The New York Times, in an obituary for Paul Van Doren, the co-founder of Vans shoes. There was no date on the photo, though the car (which I can’t identify with certainty—Camaro? Dart?) would place it around 1969/1970.


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  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,754
    edited May 2021
    Ford Maverick, produced from 1969-77. Looks like an earlier model to me.
  • Scott-Martin Kosofsky
    Scott-Martin Kosofsky Posts: 429

    Thank you, Mark. I’d forgotten about the Maverick—it was the beginning of a bad, bad, bad era for American cars. 

    More on topic: I was fascinated by the promiscuousness of the lettering. Note how the the letters on the “Open Now” signs are entirely different from each other; and how “Vans/Van’s” are different on the transom and the lower window. But the thing that got my attention was the word “flying,” which reminded me of Berthold Wolpe’s Tempest type, though I admit that might be wishful thinking.

  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,754
    Yeah. Nearly all of that would be made from fonts today.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,018
    People probably thought it was an eyesore at the time. But people today would probably be excited if the current tenant took down whatever plastic signage is up and replaced it with a jumble of wild painted lettering. I remember going to the far end of Brooklyn with Paul Shaw to look for stuff like this.

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