rudy's

i love the hand painted sign.
i'm a sucker for it.
that script is so adorable!
and the typeface for "BASS", well... i could design an entire font family based on that. in fact, it sort of reminds me of tarzana, the emigre font.

but more importantly, i love to see that signs like this still exist in midtown.

from my very limited exposure to it, one of the things i loved most about LA, and i think i mentioned this is my LA blog post, but one of the things i loved about that place was the old signage.

it's funny how on the west coast, it feels like they are more inclined to preserve that old stuff, where in NY, it's all about the new.

i had an interesting conversation with my friend cicero about this today on our lunch hour. we went to this really great german place on 9th ave near 50th st. and he was telling me about an old article that he came across, it was an interview with the guys from alleged gallery on the LES [lower east side of manhattan] and there was this bit where, once they got a little more successful, once they had a little cash, a little time, every now and again, they would come across an old painted sign on a building off a sidewalk or something in the neighborhood, and they'd offer their services to the shopkeeper to repaint it. because to them, it was preserving the feel of the neighborhood. it was an investment in what was there, not what you wanted to come. a bunch of new vinyl awnings or gaudy shiny things would have detracted from the character of the place.

ros, or anyone else that has read about this, can you chime in if my facts are wrong? i don't really know much about alleged and wouldn't want to get something like that wrong.

ugh, i better get to sleep...

>n

crests

hey,
so this is sort of off topic of what i usually do here at this blog. well, not that there is generally a topic, but if there was, this would be off of it.

i realized the other day that i needed a new logo for myself. i recently quit my job and am doing a bunch of freelance work and decided that it was about time that i re-did my website [not done yet!] and made a better effort at marketing myself.

part of that process is business cards, new logo, etc. and for this logo, i was stumped. yeah, nothing. no ideas. blank. YUK. but in joking conversations with friends, i thought aloud that i'd love to have my own crest. so as i was discussing the objects on my crest with my friend chris while we were fishing, i thought why the fuck not make this crest my logo.

feeling all ultra creative, i sketched for a couple of days, discussed with other friends over lunches, then finally came home and started designing my dope ass crest.

only to realize that, well... i was not alone in thinking that a crest would be a dope logo.

the top pic is from a building in midtown manhattan. it's a part of rockefeller center. yeah, crests. old ass crests too. very anglo, but none the less a crest.

and the second shot of from an inget of gold. a new inget of gold. my girlfriend is a jewler and shot this little camera phone pic of another crest.

also they're on a garage door down the block from where she lives as well. but i'll get to that another day maybe.

and this final pic, well... that's my logo. the, what's the word, heraldy? the heraldy is as such: the book is for portfolio, the "R" is for fonts, the hat is for a bio, and the brass knuckles are for contact. also the colored backgrounds, CMYK, and the stars, RGB.

i'm not really sure if i'm going to keep my logo. i worked on it for a minute, but there are some other examples out there that are really amazing.

check these out:
http://scionspeak.com/
i think a firm called strawberry frog did this. it's amazing. they did such a fucking great job on this! seriously, it's smart and funny and slick as all fuck.

and then there's these guys:
http://youworkforthem.com
search for "crest". they really did their homework on this too. all such great adornments!

so in conclusion, i did a crest, but lots of people did better crests than me. but that's ok, because it's good to see talented people in this world doing great work. and someday, maybe i'll do some great work too.

more posts on other stuff soon!

>n

UPDATE:
new crest as top pic. i saw this on my german lunch hour [see previous post] and used ciceros iphone to snap a quick pic of it. it's fucking RAD! i love the shit out of that!

brooklyn vs. LA

kinda funny.
one's a bodega type place in brooklyn, the other a church in LA. it's funny, because LA is sort of known for this type of... type. a number of years ago, a guy named christian schwartz designed a font called los felitz based on this sort of lettering.

emigre did a really great essay/interview about the whole thing. you can read it here:
http://www.emigre.com/EFfeature.php?di=102

it's much more interesting than anything else i can write about it. well, other than the fact that i found something similar in brooklyn.

i love brooklyn.

>n

more transit type hilarity

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