Typography in the Italian Market
May 17th, 2007 by Geoff No Comments
I have been working on-again, off-again on a pet project documenting typography/signage in the Italian Market (aka 9th Street Market) in Philadelphia for a while now. The market is about 50 feet from our studio.
My original intention was to create a book of this signage with a photo on the verso (left) page and a tracing of the letterforms on the recto (right) page. Something like below:
I had also wanted to invite type designers like Matthew Carter and other knowledgeable people to write commentary for the book. At one point, I mentioned this to Matthew after a lecture at UArts, and he gave me his card to follow up.
Since the Italian Market is considered to be one of America’s oldest outdoor markets, it allowed me to photograph a vast array of signage history in a very small area. Even a casual observer might notice that the signs range from the handmade to machine-made, from old to new.
The other night, while watching Helvetica, the movie, it occurred to me that Flickr would be a great way to get the photos up on the web and allow for commentary from everyone. The book could wait… or maybe never happen.
I found the set and uploaded them on our Flickr account last night.
This morning, I wake up and bang. One of them is featured on Philebrity. Yeah.
Just happy to dust them off and start the dialogue.
