On the right, a good example of well crafted hand painted signage. It’s obviously clear that you’re hanging a left on the next corner of 60th. The typography has been given great care, with the use of condensed faces, ample tracking and superscripting for the “TH”. The “PARK” word itself acts as a billboard, and tries to grab a drivers attention.

On the left, a white on black (typically harder to read) sign with terribly distorted characters, a really confusing street direction, and a phone number which nobody will write down. Monthly space is important to New Yorkers, but not so important for that percentage of a sign, which is supposed to attract you to park right now.

Found right near this Day & Meyer sign.

As you know, I typically don’t do street art or graffiti on the blog. But this specific piece has always grabbed me for the great condensed sans, that has been stenciled out. The G specifically. Look at that giant chin.

I love the quick hit “Elvis” stamp that someone threw up right next to the fighter jet. It’s pretty funny to see the “discussion” of street artists and taggers as they try and battle it out for space on clean walls.

This is obviously a commentary on Iraq & Afghanistan, although a bit weird, because the silhouette of the fighter looks like an F-14, which has been out of commission for some time. Still, it does balance out well.

Don’t see too many of these in the city.
Found near Mulberry Street.

Now that I’m working in Soho, I get to see lots of great type in a relatively small neighborhood. Luckily, Soho is perfect for type artifacts, because there’s a decent sense of design with most of the businesses in the area and secondly, they tend to respect the history of a lot of the older buildings.

This amazing gold-gilded sign above is right next door to my new office. Look at the wonderful imperfection of the characters, and the great flourish in between the stems of the A’s. Warm and classic. It’s a personal favorite of mine.

Little Rant: With such an amazing sign, and equally amazing storefront, I was expecting their website to have the same amount of detail and warmth. It’s a shame it doesn’t. This is a great opportunity for your web designers out there, give your clients site creative the same level of detail and care that goes into signs like the one above.

This one is obviously faux, but I really wan’t to believe it isn’t.

The setting is done so well. Beautiful gold script, with restrained swashes and a warmly aged drop stroke. The sans is ever so imperfect, but carefully kerned and set well underneath the main mark.

This is a very different direction for J Crew, if you know their typical Connecticut / Hamptons bend for retail fronts. This is a nice warm nod to early 40’s and 50’s gentlemen’s stores. I love it.

Interesting Fact: The store itself is just under two years old, as much as they would want to make you believe its been there forever. It’s former life: A Newsstand.

This poor forgotten sign sits right over the uptown entrance of the Spring St. 6 train. It’s a nicely set sans (see the Gotham references in there?), and has taken on a really wonderful patina over the years. I really love how the brush strokes have slowly come through the paint as it’s been weathered away.

The building it lives on sits currently vacant.

Another great SoHo find.

Condensed all caps, with the “the” and “of the” taking the classic upwards bend. It’s such a great example of old simple New York Type.

Note: I’m working on the redesign of the blog right now, and much older typography such as the example above has been a pretty huge reference for me. I’ve become a huge fan of white condensed, all caps sans on black. The new logo for the site may take a pretty large reference from this classic style. Stay tuned.

Beautifully condensed type (nicely tracked out) on black & orange? Absolutely classic. Hence why I’m such a fan of this Herbert Matter mark.

Update: After scouring around looking at faces, i’m about 99% certain the face is: Los Alamos Pro Fat Man by Red Rooster. See the setting from myfonts.com below.

Note: I plan on spending a bit more time in SoHo. It’s an absolute goldmine of great classic / handmade typography. Expect to see much more from this neighborhood.

I love how tastefully this Park Avenue building has integrated the numbers into their lobby. This shot was taken directly through the door of the building (without it being open.) An awesome and unique way to identify the address.

What’s extra good about this treatment, is the fact that they chose to use a condensed typeface that was well suited for the column it sits on. The forms look balanced and un-stretched. Well done.

On walking by later in the evening, you’ll find the numerals become illuminated in a soft white glow. Really cool.

Tip: Always have a good pen ready to sign into a building in Manhattan. Have phone numbers and a contact too. Doormen who do their job well, will make sure you are there for business and you are welcome. (We have a problem in the City, especially with guys who distribute piles of menus to office buildings, typically unsolicited. It results in a lot of junk paper.)

Living on the Upper East Side gives you many things, one of them is a lot of neighbors. Most of your neighbors tend to go to work at the exact same time you do. Now if you do some reading about our fine neighborhood, you’ll see that we have the densest population in all of Manhattan.

So what happens when a good portion of 200,000 people want to all go to work at the same time? What if those people can only use one subway line (4, 5, 6)?

Utter chaos.

Actually, it’s more just a lack of manners. There’s just so much humanity, that most people panic, because they believe they aren’t going to make the train or will not get out in time for the doors to close. Hence the MTA prints these nice little reminders to try to help people become civilized once more.

Tourist Tip: See the “Stand Aside” note? Please, for the love of God, let the poor departing people off the train before squeezing yourself in the door like a sardine. It’s not only good manners, it kinda makes boarding the train quicker.

Tip #2: Only assholes hold the doors. I kind of always want to kick peoples bags or hands when they stick them in the door. Way to punish a train full of 500 people, because you were seconds late! Jerks.

It’s starting to warm up in the city, and that means only one thing: late night ice cream. Of course the most popular ice cream truck all throughout the city is the infamous Mister Softee. Designed just like the classic ice cream trucks of the 50’s and 60’s, most Mister Softees can be found parked around major intersections in the city, playing their incessantly cute (and eventually mind-numbing) Mister Softee song.

The ice cream itself? Well it’s soft serve, but you can definitely taste that it was made from a powder or mixture. Perhaps that’s the ice crystals in it, or it really is just a bit sandy. I like it though. It’s hit or miss for most people. But if it’s a hot day, i’m all over it.

Tip: Avoid Haggen Dazs or any big chain at all cost in New York, if you want to save some cash. I’ve once paid $7 for two scoops of ice cream at the South Street Seaport. If you’re really broke, hit up a Duane Reade and get an ice cream bar for a $1.50. Can’t go wrong.

The old rumor (that actually holds true) is that New York has giant rats in the subway system. It’s true we do, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them giant. Once in a while you can catch them scurrying around looking through the trash that people had dropped on the tracks. Not surprisingly, you get used to seeing them.

The MTA does their diligence to maintain the rat population, and we are notified through signs like this.

Look at those FAT serifs in all caps! I always think these signs are neat, because they totally don’t match anything else in the subway system. Even the periods in the N.Y.C. seem redundant. Doesn’t NYC Transit have it’s own logo?

And who doesn’t love the silhouette art of the rat? The only way it could have been better, was if they did a dead rat on his back.

Old logo, new logo. Awkwardly positioned.

Yet another beautifully painted freight entrance. I love the layering with the dense strokes of black, then lighter gold. It’s elegant and well set. And look at the flared serifs on the E and the F. Classic.

I think the blog is taking a hand-painted bend, wouldn’t you say? I really love finding these kind of signs. Mostly, because I think they are becoming a rarity. Slowly old hand painted signs, will make way for vinyl lettering, or printed overlays of some kind. It’s nice to capture these, and think about how they were created.

This sign is especially cool, because of the still visible baselines and cap-height guides. This sign was mechanically planned with guidelines and then painted in by hand, very carefully. It’s obvious how large the stroke brush was. Looking at the smaller letters, you can get a sense of the diameter of the brushtip, especially from the thinner areas of the G.

Interesting Note: When people plan on making signs like this on their computers, they tend to forget the horizontal size for some reason. I can’t even begin to count the number of signs I’ve seen that have been squashed or compressed to fit the dimensions of a sign. Making for some seriously awkward letterforms (I’m looking at you MTA!) The sign above, the painter made perfectly condensed letterforms to make the word deliveries vertically taller, but clear and legible.

I don’t know if it’s just the pure 80’s of it, or if the way this script is cut out of the façade but it’s awesome. Looks exactly like many lipstick-written swashy script logos from the eighties, but still works after all these years. Perhaps it’s the black and white.

So, Manex is a company that manufactures, sells and rents mannequins for the fashion industry. The’ve been around since 1990 and call themselves “The premier mannequin and bust form manufacturer.”

They have completely chrome ones. Wow, it’s like a flashback to Terminator 2.

If you didn’t know, Jay-Z has a sports bar / nightclub in the Flatiron District. The name 40-40 derives from a baseball term, where a player has stolen 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in a season.

Tip for Tourists: NYC sports bars are nothing like sports bars at other places. The most upscale, gorgeous looking places can be sports bars with high-end pub food. I’ve seen places in the city with little 4″ screens on the bartaps, and even framed screens in the restrooms. New Yorkers take their sports very seriously. Even if the only good team we have is the Yankees.

I love this script. I’ve walked by this sign way too many times before actually snapping a photo. The letterforms are really big. In this image the blue paneling goes all the way to ceiling height, and down to street level. And take a look at that really funky “S”

So, after some digging, I discover that Superior has made sewing machine parts since the 1950’s. (You could probably tell by the sign.) They area also:

…the leading wholesale distributor of industrial sewing and cutting machine replacement parts and supply items to dealers and import/export firms throughout the world.

Big stuff. Now lets take a look at their website to read more.

Yikes!

Rant: I’m with Arron Draplin on this one. How can American companies, who used to value really well crafted design, degrade so far? I mean look at their website versus their sign. One can argue that the old Superior sign is antiquated, and it is. But you can’t deny that it’s well crafted and thought about. The disconnect is stunning. Part of me wonders if the responsibility rests with designers. Perhaps.

This is a conundrum that still confuses most New Yorkers. You look up and read this sign. There’s no Fourth Avenue in Manhattan! As a matter of fact, you’re standing on Park Ave.

The strangest thing of it all, is between 3rd and the old 4th (Park) is Lexington! And between 4th (Park) and 5th is Madison Ave. Of course that depends on what part of town you’re in. Anywhere below 23rd street and you’re going to hit Broadway first, and then hit 5th. Confused yet?

Originally the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 set to divide the island into 12 equidistant avenues, running East to West. Most of the avenues were given names over time. But in the meantime, two avenues were constructed in between (Madison & Lexington) , and of course Broadway was never given consideration. It simply cuts through the grid. Other avenues have tried to be renamed, like 6th Avenue becomes “Avenue of the Americas”, although you’ll never catch a New Yorker saying that.

Fourth Avenue eventually became known as Park Avenue.

I’d love to get a cabbie to drop me off at 42nd and 4th. Just to see his face.