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Vintage typography & lettering, part IV - actions & resources

The last part of our series about vintage typography is a set of of various areas of our typographic journey - from packages and labels to street discoveries and playing with letters found in library. We hope that you'll enjoy it. Just check our links and have a nice time with those beautiful vintage letters!

Vintage packages and labels

Great source of vintage typography is Once New Vintage. In addition to vintage packages and labels you can find there also other beautiful examples of vintage typography in use from various sources - even unusual ads or lettering on buttons, like below:

 

 

Museum of typography

If you'll have an opportunity to visit Germany, go to Museum of typography (Buchstabenmuseum) in Berlin - a place with great examples of vintage, as well as of modern typographic letters and characters. You can find there a lot of beautiful signs and neons. Museum has 10 years, place was established in 2005 by Barbara Dechant and Anja Schulze. Here are couple of photos from Buchstabenmuseum's Facebook site:

 

 

Searching of typography on the streets

Literolap (Typo-catcher) and Wytypowane are Polish initiatives, that aim to found, collect, and remind examples of letters hidden on city streets - buildings, shops signs, trolleys, etc. Literolap is focused on the area of one city - Torun and Literolap is a nationwide action where people send their examples from various parts of Poland. Here are some photos from Literolap:

 

Playing with vintage typography

And for a dessert - some special thing: Polona Typo - place where you can play with letters from Polonia Library's resources. Just type your text there and see the effect. Lovely way to procrastinate. Here's our example:

And here are links to previous parts of our series of typographic posts:

Part I - books, boards, posters

Part II - neons

Part III - hand painted signs

For constant dose of typographic inspirations - follow our Pinterest boards: Vintage Typography and Vintage Package.

 

Posted: May 27, 2015 | Tagged: lettering, typography, vintage

Vintage typography & lettering, part III - hand painted signs

In last part of our blog series about vintage typography and lettering you could read about neons. Now it's time for hand painted signs which are older that more advanced printing techniques, neon signs, motion pictures - and that's their power - their age.

Painter Chauncey Curtis works on a silent film advertisement for a theater in Mankato, Minnesota, in the 1930s. Courtesy Faythe Levine and Sam Macon.

Posted: May 12, 2015 | Tagged: graphic design, lettering, painting, typography, vintage

Vintage typography & lettering, part II - neons

In the second part of our journey through vintage letters we'll focus on signs, which lit up city streets for decades. We are experiencing a bit of a rediscovery of neons and are giving many of them a chance to shine again!

 

Posted: Apr 29, 2015 | Tagged: ads, graphic design, lettering, neons, typography, vintage

Vintage typography & lettering, part I - books, boards, posters

Good font is very important (often the most important) element of a good poster so - since we love both of these things -  we prepared short set of vintage lettering inspirations.
First - Agence Eureka. This rich Flickr collection contains scans of many books and publications related to typography and lettering. A few of them below:


Posted: Apr 22, 2015 | Tagged: book, calligraphy, font, graphic design, illustration, lettering, print, ruemarcellin, script, typography