The scholars of wet floor signs commit scholarship to studying wet floor signs. Their web site displays pictograms, photos, and photo-realizations of many signs pertaining to wet floors. They are led by Elena Kamas, at Stanford University. (Thanks to Anna Beukenhorst for bringing this to our attention.)
If you’re not a professional typographic practitioner, you might fall into the trap of thinking that certain upper-case letters (such as H, I, N and O) will look exactly the same upside down (i.e. when rotated 180 degrees about their z* axis). But subtle complications can, and do arise when there are serifs involved. One […]
Safety signs are one area in which, according to this study, East Germany ultimately triumphed over West Germany: “Should I Stay or Should I Go – Cognitive Conflict in Multi-Attribute Signals Probed with East and West German ‘Ampelmännchen’ Traffic Signs,” Claudia Peschke, Bettina Olk [pictured here], Claus C. Hilgetag, PLoS ONE 8(5), May 24, 2013, […]
Some business signs in London (of which more can be found in part 1), these from Ballou’s Monthly Magazine, June 1861: A stranger is surprised in London by some of the signs, which have been handed down for generations, which are used to distinguish particular places of business. Many of them are perfectly unmeaning, but […]
Some business signs in London, from Western Druggist magazine, March 1887: I must give you a few selections from my note book of some of the business signs in London that struck me as curious. Several signs of artists draping the real figure, otherwise tailors, were noticed; then again another was ;’A professed trousers maker”; […]