i have nothing to say about this black & mild cigar.
absolutely nothing at all. really.

that new orleans copper thing is funny, to me at least, because it's very similar to that lettering that is all over california, the one in los felize, which an emigre font is based on.

i did a posting on that a ways back.
i saw a few examples in new orleans, and it always makes me smile.
[i think they owe a lot to cooper black as well, but that's another story i guess]

i've got a mega-post of a bunch of shots from the pharmacy museum that i've been sitting on. there are scores of them to get through. so hopefully soon. they really are quite stellar.

so check back soon!

>n

batch 3

more coming at you!
i love the antique store crest, but especially the cruddy looking gold blackletter type on teh window. ugh, i fucking LOVE that!

lots of crests in this town... lots of crests.

>n

batch 2

i love that top one.
the S was... HUGE.
really.

all i kept thinking of was if it ever came off and fell on a bus, an entire group of people would be eliminated by one giant S.

more tk.

and thanks for the props, doug!
the food was AMAZING!
i can't wait to tell you guys about it...

>n

batch 1

some of what i've started to edit down...

>n

and i'm sorry,

but this pic deserves its own post.

hotard?
really?

what, cum dumpster was taken?

hotard is a tour bus company in louisiana.
http://www.hotard.com/site.php

wtf?

as my girlfriend and i said, repeatedly after seeing this. well, it was more a lament that anything. we've been alive a combined 67 years on this planet. and in this time, we've been aware of the existance and usage of the two words that make up this linguistic wonder. but much to our chagrin, we never put the two together.

ho-tard.

fucking genius.

>n

this is a first...

i'm posting something that's not a sign or anything like that.
i saw this type in an advertisement online.
i really, REALLY like it.

it's got this whole bent paper thing going.
and it looks like the same font that wired magazine is using in its front of the book section.

whom ever designed this, well done!

>n

i'm BACK!

hey y'all, i'm back from new orleans. and while i go through the hundreds, yes... HUNDREDS of photos i took to separate the wheat from the chaff, let me just post a few that i've been meaning to get in there.

these are old, mostly brooklyn types. the sleds are a storefront window in manhattan. the building... who the fuck knows. all i know is that it's on atlantic ave in brooklyn, and that crest, it's on a garage door in windsor terrace. funny, right?

so yeah, check back soon for some southern deep fried cajun creole types.

>n

aw, fuck...

it's been quite some time since my last post. i'd love to say that it's because i've been out and about in the world taking pics of type from here to dubai. but the fact of the matter is that i've been just plain lazy.

my bad.

but that's all going to change!

for the moment at least.

next week my girlfriend and i are going to new orleans. i am so excited about it, i really am! and i'm going to have my camera strapped to my dick so i don't miss a minute of the action.

er... yeah, didn't mean that porn style.
just that i'll be strapped and will shoot every piece of sweet sweet type that i come across.

so check back here in a couple of weeks, and i'll hopefully have posted some tasty tidbits of type.

in the mean time, i'm going to check my archives for SOMETHING to post, and hopefully get that up by the end of the weekend.


and to all of you that wrote in with concern about my lack of posts in '09, i thank you, and i appologize for my lazyness.

nah, just kidding.
no one ever wrote in.

fuckers.

stay tuned!

>n

uss texas

hi,
so this isn't really my posting, but that makes it all the better for me.

it's a bunch of really dope shots from the uss texas, a battleship that my friend doug went to visit out in, well... texas.

i'm going to give a little rundown of what in particular i dig, then doug is going to chime in and say a little something about something. it's funny, he sends me so much good shit that i never would have found myself, and somehow, some way, i always fail to say thank you.

so doug, thanks for sending this my way, and for all the other excellent little tasty bits that you've shared with me.

on to the type!

ok, so i'm a sucker for all of this old packaging and painted on hand done type.

i love how someone took the time to paint the type in the arrows in a vaguely art deco style. it truly warms my heart. and anyone who's ever read anything else on this blog knows that i'm a sucker for a beautiful script, so that hearts dice box is a thing of beauty to me. not to mention that i find it more than a little surprising to see dice and condoms and smokes so easily available on a 1940's american warship.

sort of like the ATF, you know... alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
dice, smokes and condoms... NOW we've got a party! i wonder if it's like that today?

doug, what's your favorite? did i post it?

from doug...

The Battleship Texas was built in 1912 and served in both World Wars. It's now a floating museum on the outskirts of Houston. The cigarettes and combs come from the ship's store, which they keep stocked with period pieces to give a more authentic flavor during the tours. Being a sucker for penguins, I naturally loved the Kool cartons. The condoms were on display in the medical supply room, along with a chemical prophylactic kit that was too far away to photograph well. The chemical kits involved what looked like a small tube of some gel-like substance and a needle. Not sure where you were supposed to stick it and I am not
too keen to find out.

I love all the directional arrow signs painted on the walls of the ship, though I was slightly disappointed that I never found an "UP" arrow. One of my favorites (not posted -- it's at
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3006/3106539434_e56643b6b3.jpg) shows the hand-painted signage directly next to stenciled lettering. "Officers' Country" refers to the front section of the lower deck, where all the officer staterooms were located.

My other favorite is the "Hand Off!" sign (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3069/3105712721_75d3bf9e96.jpg). It was done freehand, it's unusually phrased (most people just say "Hands off!", to relieve the potential offender of any doubt), and it's located right in the middle of a wall. Still, there is a nice flow to the lettering, and someone thought it was important enough to preserve it through the many, many times the interior of the ship has been repainted.

The dice game wasn't actually on the battleship. It was in a display inside the San Jacinto Monument, which is directly across from the battleship. I took the picture for both the great packaging and the fact it was manufactured in Brooklyn (right around the corner from
Hank's Saloon).

another rudy's

classic!

>n

rosebud

these old sleds are actually in the window display for an anthropologie store near me.

cool type on these old bastards!

>n

what it's all about

this is another quick one, but i do have to take a minute to write about that national neon script. i fucking LOVE that script. it's neon. and it's a cool looking script. what more do i need in life?

if i could, i'd wear that shit, ALL the time.

and the other thing, well, it's a bunch of name plate necklaces.
i became mildly obsessed with these after my girlfriend made me a tie clip that says "Mr. Russo", in script no less!

all dope.

>n

image dump

it's been a while since i've done a post, so i'll just dump what i've been shooting, then write about it later.

actually, guess i'll call this one the neon image dump.

cool?

>n

cali type

hey,
my friends cicero and katie were just out west in cali and they took a couple of shots for me. i really dig them, they speak volumes beyond words.

i'm hoping i can get ros to do a little guest blogging, but i haven't even asked him yet, so i suppose i should get around to that.

in any case, enjoy the shots!
thanks ros and katie!

>n

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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