the sign maker and the typographer
Years ago, before I ever got into Web design, I was a sign maker. For about 3 years, I studied this craft. At it’s best, the art of sign making is a demonstration of both the purity of information design and subtlety typography. At it’s worst, it’s the loud example of why these two disciplines are so important.
the art of sign making
The art of sign making has changed a lot with the digital era. The romance seems to have been washed away. Digital plotters and laser routers have made things too easy for the sign maker and the craft has suffered. Recently, Jason Santa Maria recapped on a typography walking tour he went on, through the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Sifting through his flickr stream, stirred up in me, the enthusiasm that first lead me to pick up the sign makers tools.
Granted, the reality of the work was not that satisfying at all. I was hard pressed to find, in colleague and client alike, anyone who seemed to recognize the term typographer. Of course, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It was not that the term escaped this particular industry. It was more like the meaning slipped out the door when no one was looking.
In the midst of all of this that lacked what I can only call character, I did find in my experience, a wonderful thread to the heart of sign making and typography. It came from a 90 year old man who still practiced the art of hand painting letters.
I’m not talking about the pasty, cracked letters you see on bakery windows. I’m talking about the massive lettering you find on the sides of buildings. You can still see traces of this fine craft, on some of our older buildings. Jason provided some stellar examples from his tour.
In case you don’t appreciate the complexity of this kind of typography, let walk through the process. There was no projections or digital tracings or charts to follow. In some case, letters could be as high as a four story building. But often in my own experience, they scaled around twenty feet in height.
The really good sign painters would meticulously measure out the area and calculate a grid for the letters and spaces between. The experts would eyeball it. Don’t believe me? I’ve seen it. And the letters were perfect. It’s a dying art, if not a dead art. No one teaches sign painting anymore and thusly, an important school in typography is lost to us.
Understanding type comes in many different forms. Sign painting is one form, that requires a very unique understanding of type. So thank you Jason, for bringing back some good memories.
Sign painting is definitely not a forgotten art, especially here in San Francisco. It’s hard not to appreciate sign painting when your entire city is covered with murals, signs, and other artistic letterings.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his work around, but Portuguese artist Rigo 23 does these great signs on the sides of buildings that are not only beautiful examples of sign painting themselves, but call contextual attention to the details in the urban landscape we often forget to notice. His piece One Tree is one of my favorites.