A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
nytimes.com
A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#2Looks like Comic Sans to me :-)
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#3If you put your hand to your ear, you can hear into the future, when ten years from now disgruntled nerds will complain about their day being ruined by yet another unoriginal restaurant sign.
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#4Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#5Looks like Comic Sans to me :-)
Obviously you're not a golfer.. I mean typographer :P
I can see why it might remind an untrained eye of Comic Sans, but I strongly disagree. Then again, I have an arts degree, so let's chalk that up to déformation professionnelle.
The funny thing about Comic Sans is that you can see that it is from the nineties computer era. Although I don't know if it was first created on paper and then transferred, or created directly on a computer, its curves feel both too mathematically "perfect", and at the same time ruined by human intervention. This is probably best highlighted by fonts that attempt to "fix" Comic Sans, like Comic Neue[0]. It's a bit like how tweening in computer animation can feel off when it uses naive linear interpolation, because it breaks our intuitions of normal physics (or is maybe that's just me).
Choc on the other hand is very clearly (to me) a font that was created before the digital era. The brushstrokes feel natural in a way that we could not create from within a computer medium until recently (thinking in the order of decades). And yet, its feels more consistent with itself than the comic sans letters do. Furthermore, if you view it in the context of designs from the fifties it just "fits", you can see that it was a products of its time (same with Comic Sans and Microsoft Bob being visibly a nineties product, actually - and that is not me throwing shade on either of them).
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#6Oops... they either let Kumo II slip in or intended it to be there as an example of Mistral, the other font from the designer of Choc, and forgot to point that out.
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#7What about Matura
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#8> “There’s an unmistakable energy in all the designs that [Roger Excoffon] does,” said Tobias Frere-Jones, a Brooklyn-based typeface designer. “They project their personality so clearly. And it’s very obviously not Helvetica or not Times or any other generic thing that might be on the awning next door.” Excoffon’s most popular typeface is probably Mistral, which was modeled after his own handwriting.
Both this passage and Exofon's fonts remind me of Henry van der Horst, a Dutch graphic designer who basically has a monopoly on Dutch market signs. His work has become so ubiquitous that a market stall without it feels less "authentic", so there is a lot of demand for his work.
It's crazy: everyone here knows his handwriting, without knowing it was one man doing all of those signs for decades, and when I say "all those signs" I mean that at a national level (altough the Netherlands is small of course). He's like a weird kind of anonymous household name ("anonyfamous?"). Well, until a newspaper wrote an article about him down a few years ago, that is.
[0] http://www.willemverweijen.nl/henry-van-de-horst/
[1] https://www.volkskrant.nl/mensen/-op-de-markt-doet-niemand-a...
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#9Oh no... now I will not be able to unsee.
Re: A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
#10Paul Boegemann was trained as one such sign painter — he is the proprietor of Paul Signs Inc., in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn — and has been in business for over 35 years.
“I learned how to hand letter signs and trucks,” Mr. Boegemann said. “We started with a simple pencil and paper. We designed what we wanted and used the styles we wanted and knew how to apply...”
Asked if he’s ever made a sign in Choc, Mr. Boegemann said: “This style is a ‘Bastard’ letter style.”
I like this guy :-D