WTC Logo Preservation Project
Just what it says
Type Nesting
Birds. Nests. Signs. Yup.
Museum of Letters (Berlin)
I was a bit slow to discover this amazing place, but, gosh, what a place it is. The Museum of Letters in Berlin (site in German) and a Core77 showcase about the Museum, in English.
Two burning questions: a) how on earth did it get funded, and, b) how did they manage to collect all these examples? (For anyone who’s tried collecting old signs, you’ll know how difficult it can be: even if you happen to be there on the right day and the sign or demolition people are sympathetic, it’s still entirely possible to lose these things in dumpsters or scrap heaps, or for them to be spirited away, perhaps into someone’s private collection.)
Sign manufacture
Wonderful Flickr set inside the Washington State Dept of Transportation sign shop. Wow. (Image CC WSDOT.)
Is that....? (Yup.)
Brilliant art/knitting intervention by Lauren Marsden . Bravo. (Image copyright Lauren Marsden. Via Craft: magazine.)
Enseignes Montréal Signs
We’re working hard to set up the ‘Enseignes Montréal Signs’ community database – a kind of wikipedia for signs old and new in Montréal. More news as it happens.
Another part of the project is to step in and try to save certain signs that are under threat of removal/loss, or, having been saved by caring community members, are in need of new storage space. This is a very modest, low-budget effort which will nevertheless see some signs displayed semi-permanently inside one or more campus buildings at Concordia University.
Above, some of the Ben’s Restaurant signage, courtesy of the demolition crew; and, the Warshaw sign, courtesy the SDBSL (10/3/08). (My grad student helpers and I had just picked up the signs; we then laid them out on the grass at the Loyola campus to log everything, before placing it all in secure storage.)
The Saga of Elsie and Elmer
The Montreal Gazette reports today that two huge, lifelike cow heads – remnants of a 1950s 3D billboard on Sherbrooke St West in NDG – are under imminent threat of loss.
(photo© The Gazette)
UPDATE (10/9/08): I thought I came off sounding like a humourless (and unhelpful) old grump in Harrold’s Gazette article, so I actually contacted Parmalat to offer to take the cows. A very nice representative from Edelman Canada, Parmalat’s PR agency, wrote back to say: “the company still wishes to keep the signs at this time for future use, but wanted us to pass along the company’s thanks and appreciation for your offer and interest.” Moo.
America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least)
(Video: Jess Gibson. Link via Design Observer.)
The Guaranteed Milk Bottle sign
From today’s Montreal Gazette. Photos of the milk bottle on Flickr.
