1930's Ex Libris

I found this Ex Libris in a book I bought from a high quality second hand bookshop in Helsinki. It’s in an apparently second edition J. B. Priestley’s Angel Pavement from 1930, published by William Heinemann Ltd, London. It was obviously purchased by Mr. Starck in 1932, and it was no. 604 in his library.

Mr. Starck seemed to have been Karelia minded, as the two swords suggest – eastern and western. The same theme is in a label of a popular Finnish beer, Karjala (Karelia).
Karelia is in the border of Finland and Russia, in 1930 it was still totally in Finland, now part of it belongs to Russia.

The K in Starck is pretty interesting as well as the Ö without proper umlauts.

Domus Pompeiana

I went to this Pompeji exhibition in Helsinki today. The font used, Apollonia, was specially designed by Anna Väänänen for the event as part of a school project (schools were involved with putting up the exhibition). Just thought I’d share it with you.

http://www.amosanderson.fi/

An accidental A

My son was having a cup of cocoa, when he called me to see this. He knows how to get my attention.

Typographical brand film

I went to see an exhibition on best of Finnish advertising and graphic design in 2007, and this was shown there

http://www.borenius.com/export/download/BK-video/index.html

About the competition:
https://www.grafia.fi/index.php?sid=12085537030075068e4fa80b72980e5c8ca1...

Unadopted Emu

Finally got some photos developed. These were taken in a small Northern English town.

This first one puzzles me, how can an old street be unadopted? The street sign was on a wall of a pretty old building.

This old shop sign was on a wall of a side street building. Got some funny looks when I took the photo.

This one is from Milan: Fonts galore in Corso Buenos Aires

Helvetica psychology

From Rhymes With Orange comic today:

Taxi!

Here’s a typical Helsinki taxi sign from the front. At the back there’s an individual number, usually in Helvetica or Futura. On Friday I was sitting in a tram when I spotted one with the number in Cooper Black. Now, that was refreshing... Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me.

Memories of Summer, part two

To finish off Summer me and Spouse went for a long weekend to Rome. There’s a lot of type there, and here’s some samples:

Trajan, of course (under scaffolding)

From the historical center

And some more modern ones

An one without type, the compulsory cat photo (like all the postcards)

Memories of Summer, part one

I spent some time with my in-laws in England this Summer. As usual, I was on the lookout for interesting signs and type

These gems were found in the pantry

This bread bin is at least 50 years old. I think the type treatment is quite modern, or is it?

I believe this little bottle is about half a century old, too

The old street signs are interesting, too

Note the pointing hand!

a close up

Selfish Jean

One of my favorite bands, Travis, has just released a new album (The Boy With No Name) and a single, Selfish Jean.
With Selfish Jean comes a website (http://www.selfishjean.com), where one can confess acts of selfishness, donate for a good cause and download a free font. Design credits of the font go to Martin Demetri, but my guess is, it’s based on his handwriting.