Typehunting
August 19, 2013 6:14 PM   Subscribe

Typehunting. A very long page of very well curated snippets of lettering and typography on packages from decades ago.
posted by ardgedee (12 comments total) 44 users marked this as a favorite
 
In the winter on my drive home, there's a hand-painted sign that the town(?) puts out about ice-skating. It looks JUST like a 40s-era typography thing (especially the ampersand) and I'm not sure it isn't just well-preserved. It doesn't look like a replica, but maybe it was done recently by an olde-tymey sign painter. I look forward to it every Christmas. Also, the flea market is a great place to see this stuff.
posted by DU at 6:28 PM on August 19, 2013


Oh, these are very, very pretty. Someone has a great eye.
posted by heurtebise at 6:33 PM on August 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I know this is a question for the green, but I would love to know about more sites that do this sort of collecting/curating of typefaces and graphic art. Thanks for this.
posted by oneironaut at 8:35 PM on August 19, 2013


I love this one.
posted by trip and a half at 8:52 PM on August 19, 2013


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posted by 23 at 9:49 PM on August 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Love this. Thanks.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 11:15 PM on August 19, 2013


oneironaut, it's been linked here before but if you haven't seen it you might enjoy Fonts in Use.

These are so lovely. I guess everything was much harder work to create then, but it shows what lovely type can be created when people have to (design and) place every letter, and what we've lost through having all these digital typefaces so easy to hand.
posted by iotic at 11:50 PM on August 19, 2013


Thanks!
posted by oneironaut at 10:01 AM on August 20, 2013


Thanks for the FIU plug, iotic. Folks who like Typehunting might also like Chromeography and Fleurs Coiffeur Liquour.
posted by Typographica at 10:50 AM on August 20, 2013 [3 favorites]


BTW, I agree that the Typehunting curator has a good eye but I'm disappointed in the lack of context. No info about what each object is, where it was shot, nor tags to find like items. No doubt it's nice eye candy, but it could be so much more.
posted by Typographica at 10:53 AM on August 20, 2013


My favorites are the ones you still see around — like the Union Pacific logo: totally familiar, but I'd never appreciated the type on it before.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 11:13 AM on August 20, 2013


This makes me wistful. When I was a child, you'd see a lot more of these artifacts of the mid-century around. (In older Southern cities, you can still see faded, hand-painted signs on the walls of old buildings sometimes). To me they were mysterious sigils of the adult world that I would one day make my way in. What I didn't know was, I was wrong - they were fragments of a vanishing way of life. I'm still sort of nostalgic for a completely imaginary life that I never got to live.
posted by thelonius at 12:47 PM on August 20, 2013


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