Street Typography

"The written word" typically brings to mind an active engagement with books, magazines, and journals, whether printed or digital. But those of us in towns and cities are constantly engagedwith another type of written word - the typography of streets, of the urban experience. Wherever there are businesses, apartment buildings, streets, or subway stations, there are names onsigns, and each sign represents dozens of design decisions: colors, fonts, sizes, and so on. Together, these decisions contribute volumes to the character of the cities and streets where they appear,reflecting, often on a subconscious layer, the local culture and social history, the commercial environment and the daily ecology. Street Typography examines this aspect of place through twoapproaches: academic articles written by scholars and an exposition of street typography by designers and artists from all over the world.