About a month ago I was checking out some lettering on the side of an old building, and I must have been staring sort of intently at it, because a foreign tourist came up next to me a took a picture of it.

I’ve always wanted to start something like that. Maybe standing in the street somewhere and pointing at noting in the distance - see if people try and see what i’m looking at. That or random queues in front of random doors.

A couple months ago, I was on the subway on my way to my typeface design class. I was intently looking at some very large print-outs of the font I was working on.

A couple of deaf teenagers started making fun of me, saying “A B C...” like I was learning my ABC’s.

True story.

Sometimes when I’m walking down the street I spot poorly kerned letters on something or other and walk smack into whatever was in front of me before I got distracted. Coca-Cola trucks decorated in the late 1980s/early 1990s are the worst.

Eric, I was waiting at a subway stop yesterday and took a picture of the station name lettering. Shortly after I did, three other people came up and did the same thing. (At least no police showed up…)

I think I remember reading that Tobias Frere-Jones has/had undertaken an extension of his Gotham research and was documenting type/lettering at something like every intersection in Manhattan. If it’s true, I’m sure he got more than his share of raised eyebrows, to say nothing of what the DHS would think.

I think I really got a bad case of type obsession: the hospital my second daughter was born in had all kinds of soothing messages printed on the walls of the delivery room.

While my wife was giving birth, I could not stop wondering what the damn typeface was, I just couldn’t remember the name. When my little baby girl had finally arrived, and my wife and baby were sleeping soundly, I slipped back into the room to take some photos with my mobile. Turned out it was Palatino :-))

Last week I was taking photos of some quite unique scrolly LED
lettering (it actually reminded me of the RdR - I’ll post the photos
soon) and then I noticed my cousin taking a picture of me doing it.

hhp

this evening, the sky was threatening and clear at the same time — right around sunset, so the wild clouds were lit up orange and grey against a weirdly blue sky. i pulled the car over next to a park that had a terrific vista, and started taking photos. after a minute, i could hear someone yelling. turns out a group of teenagers thought i was photographing them and started running toward me...

at moments like these, you’re struck with the dilemma of modern existence. do i stand my ground, and when they get close, explain they aren’t even in the photos — they were all of sky and clouds? or is discretion the better part of valor, and do you climb back into the golf and drive away?
as seuss asked:
“well, what would YOU do?”

I say take photos of them running toward you, then jump in the car and drive off.

heh heh heh