Posts about Shopfronts
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Advertising in Southern Laos
Been there, Don Det
The region of the Si Phan Don in southern Laos can, with little exaggeration, be described as the very end of the world. Of the countless islands scattered across this stretch of the Mekong, only a few are inhabited, and a mere three have seen any degree of tourist development. The electrification of the islands has brought with it a modest prosperity—alongside a steady flow of visitors. Where competition emerges, so too does the impulse to advertise.
Signs of Saigon
Tracing Old Saigon
Inspired by the Signs of Saigon project by Steffi Neukirchen, I set out on my first trip to Ho Chi Minh City in December 2019 with the expectation of encountering a wealth of historic lettering. As it turned out, it proved less straightforward than expected.
Awnings as Advertising Space
Extreme Scale 3D-Typography
In Ho Chi Minh City, the prolific use of awnings as advertising surfaces is a defining feature of the urban landscape. Smaller shops and restaurants, in particular, make use of these large-format displays to attract attention, often prominently presenting the house number in oversized numerals.
Deserted streets in India? An uncommon sight.
Empty streets
Cars, buses, countless yellow Ambassador taxis, hand-pulled rickshaws, and India’s only tramway: the streets of Kolkata exist in a near-constant state of movement and congestion. Yet during Durga Puja, the most significant religious festival in Bengal, this intensity briefly subsides. The streets appear almost emptied, revealing a quieter urban surface in which numerous typographic details come into view.
A (virtuell) walk to Vienna’s gilded Signs
Vienna, Gilded
Pallas Athena, the Secession, the Plague Column—Vienna has never been sparing in its use of gilding on architectural landmarks. Far less attention, however, has been paid to the gilded shopfronts and commercial portals that came into vogue around the turn of the twentieth century, and which played a formative role in establishing Vienna’s reputation as a centre of sign painting.
The Verein Stadtschrift in Vienna
The Typographic DNA of the City
Television repair, photographic studios, taverns: not only the design of the lettering itself, but also the services once advertised by these signs now appear curiously antiquated. Yet it is neither nostalgia nor a longing for a “better past” that motivates the association Stadtschrift, which collects, preserves, and reintroduces these Viennese signages into the public realm.