I was just looking through the Time piece on The Murals of Philadelphia, and came across this rather wonderful bit of lettering. I love the subtle changes in the colours to differentiate the words and the slight variations in the letterforms and x-height. It’s a really nice piece, I love the faces at the bottom too, but it was the lettering that caught my eye. Also, this one is just wonderful. Go and look at all of them!

This image has been knocking around the hard-drives of my last four computers since I scanned it in. I’ve always admired the typography of it since I found it on the pub table all those years ago. The joys of being type-obsessed, eh?

I always thought that the names of the shuttles was written in Helvetica, at the very least screened on in some regular manner. Looking at this image from airliners.net, I see that it looks hand-painted, and after all these years of patching and repainting, the lettering looks decidedly wonky.

Having the camera ready near the TV can be rewarding at times. The National Geographic channel have been running a series of typographic trailers for the series Seconds from Disaster. I’ve only managed to grab a few quick shots but you can see how fantastic they are. The little blip you can see on the ‘O-RING’ one is the word ‘CRACK’, and under Concorde, there’s the broken-up word ‘DEBRIS’. If I get better shots I’ll repost them.

I just came across this article on Japanese rubber stamps on Ping Mag. Go read.

I came across this site on vintage RC cars today, well, more specifically I came across the decals on the site. There’s quite an impressive collection here, kept presumably until the guy can get them all converted to EPS files. If they were higher resolution scans, I guess it wouldn’t be too difficult a process to use LiveTrace in Illustrator. Mind you, looking closely, a fair few of them have slight registration problems in the printing, so auto tracing would necessitate a fair amount of rework.

Still, just look at all those logos! All those swooshes and go-faster stripes! I love racing decals anyway, ever since I got to go with my Dad to vintage races at Oulton and Donnington Parks. They’re great. Vroom!

I was reading about Postopolis! on City of Sound, and came across a short writeup of Timescapes, a multimedia exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (scroll down a bit). I love the design of this map (click for larger version) - looking closely I think that’s Eccentric ¹ isn’t it? Until now, I’ve never seen that font used on anything that makes it look good. Here, it looks rather dignified. [Update] I actually think that it’s Democratica. I thought it was the freeware Eccentric because (sigh) that’s what a company I work with was using.

Also, while hunting for more examples of the work online, I realise that it’s usually museums who completely fail to show off their exhibits to any great effect. Looking at the official page on the museum’s site, would you be enticed to go see it? Where’s the gallery? I mean, it’s a multimedia piece, so putting a few screenshots of the thing online wouldn’t hurt them one little bit - you still have to go to the museum to get the full effect of it, and seeing some examples online might actually get you to go.

I came across the hi site today via Computerlove. There’s some great work on there, but one in particular caught my eye, this very simple and effective signage treatment. The back is painted with a UV-reactive paint that causes the shadow behind the sign (which are mounted at a distance from the wall) to have a greenish glow. My limited German leads me to understand the writing on the wall below are the names and interests (Chuck Norris?) of the new student intake for a particular year, though I couldn’t be quite certain.

I need to know so much more about the typeface in this image. I found the image in this pingmag article on Dainippon Type Organization, where there’s a little bit of info, but I can’t find anything beyond that. Feed me facts!