TRUCK: Symbol Mattress

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Saw this truck while out walking one day, it was making a mattress delivery to the local thrift store. For some odd reason, the thrift store has taken to selling new mattresses, probably the only new thing you can buy in there.

As for the typography on the truck, The Symbol Mattress logo is quite interesting, including a sleeping person in the letter o was very clever. The whole layout and design is really well done. The font they chose is really interesting: it seems at first glance to be sans serif, but upon closer examination you will see just the slightest hints of serifs in the lettering.

If only the design genius who created the graphics for this truck were able to work on the Symbol Mattress web site: it's a real disaster.

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SIGN: Stop

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The ubiquitous stop sign, seen everywhere, telling us all to stop, look around, and take a moment to reflect on how how little real driving we do, compared to sitting at various traffic control devices.

In this particular area, there seems to be a stop sign every hundred feet, no kidding. Someone went a bit crazy with the signage.

If nothing else, they remind me of this old song from Buffalo Springfield.

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

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LICENSE PLATE: Illinois

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Something we see everyday, but pay little attention to: the classic license plate. Here is a typical example of an Illinois class B truck plate, found on the van for a roofing company.

For such a simple, mundane object, it has three different fonts in use: a fancy script for the word "Illinois"; regular block-like lettering for the license number itself, and a nice little serif font for the slogan "Land of Lincoln." I personally do not care for the fancy script used for Illinois, but it does make very good use of the small, mostly horizontal space that is available, though I think a san serif font like the one Olympus uses for their cameras would have been a better choice. But in going with the fancy script, they should have at least used it for the slogan as well, instead of the mashup of fonts in this small space, along with the barely visible image of President Lincoln.

I would move the president's portrait to the extreme right or left of the plate number, and given it it's own special place, where numbers or letters would not interfere, or even leave it in the middle, but not allow letters or numbers to cover it.

But I do like how the driver decided to spruce things up by adding the stuffed toy tiger. That was a stroke of brilliance.

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CAMERA: Olympus E-P2

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Here's my newest digital camera: an Olympus E-P2 with an Olympus 17mm f/2.8 lens. I purchased this camera to be my "go anywhere" camera, that I'll take with me literally anywhere I go. The neat thing about is that it's as small as any little camera one would pick up at Wal-Mart or Target, but inside are the electronics and sophistication of a full size DSLR. The photos it takes are absolutely wonderful.

In regards to typography, there are two things to point out: the traditional Olympus logo on the camera and lens, and the wording on the lens itself.

First of all, the classic Olympus logo which has been in use since the early 1970's. It's a very simple, sans-serif font, short, fat, bold and all caps. In typical Olympus fashion, the logo appears on the lens cap, and on the camera just above the lens itself. Though it's a very simple logo, the boldface works extremely well to make it stand out, and it's much better from the skinny, narrow font that Olympus used previously.

Secondly, there is the wording used to describe the lens. Here Olympus follows a standard that's been in use by all camera lens makers for sometime: a very simple sans-serif font, with a narrow stroke, but the bright white letters standout on the black lens background. As is almost always the case, the descriptive info is in all caps, except for the "mm" designation after the 17, which is the traditional notation for millimeters, and always uses the smaller case letter m.

The overall all effect of the lettering on the black and dark gray camera body is very professional, and attracts a person to the object itself, making them curious as to what it can do, and it's capabilities.

Here's a sample of the Olympus logo for web use that I got from the Olympus Global website.

The bold lettering and the extreme horizontal orientation of the logo work extremely well for web use, as well as letterhead and cameras.

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SIGN: Kyoto Japanese Restaurant

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A small sign above the door tells folks walking down this sidewalk that this is the door that leads to the Kyoto Japanese Restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant left here for a new location about a quarter mile up the road, so if you looked in through the glass, you would find an empty space. But the sign lives on, even though the restaurant is long gone.

All throughout the strip mall, it seems the owner/manager put these up for the benefit of shoppers. Further down you can see a sign for an optical store, that's been gone from that space for years. Sadly, there is only one orignal tennet left, a dry cleaners.

Neat thing about this Kyoto sign is that it's obviously using a sans serif font, but notice how they did their best to fit the entire name on one small sign. Big, widely spaced letters are used for "Kyoto", but the lettering for "Japanese Restaurant" are very narrow and squished together.

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SIGN: Pull

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Here's one of those simple litte signs you see on doors all the time, giving you a very simple, direct, one word instruction as to what to do: PULL!

The font is as simple as can be, a sans-serif, all-caps font done in gold lettering on a black background, for a bit of class. But instead of the typical left-right horizontal orientation of the letters, the sign maker opted for a vertical interpretation, which gives this simple instruction a bit of uniqueness. Just think: how often do you ever see anything with the letters arranged vertically like this? I bet it's hard for you to think of another one.

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SIGN: L.A. Tan

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Even though there's a scaffold in the way, it's hard to miss the bright red "L.A. Tan" sign on this storefront. The sign was just recently installed, which is probably why the scaffolding is there.

The lettering uses a nice, bold sans serif font, but notice how the letter A's have palm trees embedded in them! A very unique touch, that would make an otherwise simple red sign a bit more dramatic.

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TRUCK: Bimbo

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I see these trucks all over, with the cute little white bear logo, and slices of white bread floating on the sky. Though it seems something happened, where part of the design is missing for some odd reason.

As for the typography, a bright red san-serif font makes is used for the logo, but those letter B's have some unique styling.

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The bronze plaque

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This plaque is posted by the tomb of Col. Robert McCormick at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, Illinois. It gives the background information on the construction of his tomb, in the shape of the ancient Greek's exedra, and how it was constructed.

The typeface used is a super clean, very easy to read sans-serif, mono-space type, done in all capitol letters. The plaque itself is bronze set on a granite base--certainly designed to last as long as the tomb itself. I love the simple, elegant design, to the point of it being nearly boring. And yet, the bronze and the granite give it quite a bit of class. The typeface looks like something that would have come out of a linotype machine, which would be very appropriate for Col. McCormick, seeing how he was the owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

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