What's really great about being a designer is that, if you're lucky, there's not too much routine. Rarely are two jobs quite the same and sometimes you get involved in some really exciting things.
We're doing some very nice work for a restaurant right now: advising on their interior design and designing their graphics. So last week I went over to see our sign maker to see how things were coming along and this is what they had for me.
Now, if you do a lot of signage stuff perhaps this is run-of-the-mill but, quite frankly, the sight of 1000pt 3D Clarendon is more than enough to get my heart pumping.
Lovely.
Is that your signage in the pictures?
Posted by: Ben | 03 July 2007 at 10:07 AM
Hmm, I'm tempted to put that lot through Andy's Anagram Solver http://www.ssynth.co.uk/~gay/anagram.html
(By the way, that's a nice shade of yellow.)
Posted by: davidthedesigner | 03 July 2007 at 10:25 AM
I work at a digital sign company as a mac operator/printer/trimmer/all round nice guy and I always have a moment of panic when a 20 meter wide sign gets printed that I have worked on. The trouble is that Illustrator only goes up to about 1200pt with out converting to outlines which is never really big enough.
Posted by: Dion | 03 July 2007 at 10:39 AM
Yes Ben, that's our lettering - should have made that clearer.
David, thanks. The yellow is a little brighter than I'd hoped but it's up now and it looks pretty good.
Dion, if only you were closer. I want a friend that does your job so I can save the rejects from the skip. Do you get many surplus letters?
It also occurred to me that signmakers must have to take down and throw away (!??!) loads of old signs. Someone should collect all the old stuff and flog it on ebay. They'd make a fortune from people like me.
Posted by: Richard | 03 July 2007 at 11:16 AM
I <3 Clarendon!
Posted by: David Larson | 03 July 2007 at 11:42 AM
Phwooaarrggh. They're lovely!
We're currently working on a similar project but we're using Baskerville. I think I might have to skip over to the signage people to get all touchy feely with the letterforms too!!
Nice work Acejet.
Posted by: april | 03 July 2007 at 12:58 PM
Richard, we mainly do the flat boring digital vinyl type stuff, none of this fancy 3d lettering.
The amount of wastage that we generate is staggering every time the machine is loaded up we waste about 9 square meters of stock and thats before we start printing.
Posted by: Dion | 03 July 2007 at 04:29 PM
They're lovely. Great blog, too, I have been reading for a while. The "a" on the picture looks a little bit diferent from Clarendon, is it a variation or another type?
Posted by: lulu | 03 July 2007 at 06:41 PM
Ha! Lulu, I knew that would happen. Well spotted. I was doing a little more on the project today and realised that it's not Clarendon, although it is a Clarendon (i.e. it falls under the slab serif sub-category of Clarendon as a font "based on the Clarendon model"). It's actually Morris Fuller Benton's New Century Schoolbook.
Posted by: Richard | 04 July 2007 at 12:33 AM
Check out this signage:
http://blog.pentagram.com/archives/2007/07/sign_of_the_times.php
10,116 point Fraktur. Wow!
Posted by: ManxStef | 09 July 2007 at 11:19 PM
The NCSchoolbook looks great I wrote it down for future reference. Thanx ;)
I noticed the differences because I'm currently thru a Clarendon phase, hehe.
Cheers!
Posted by: lulu | 10 July 2007 at 04:33 PM