Author: Shonna Trinch Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press ISBN: 0826522793 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 315
Book Description
Although we may not think we notice them, storefronts and their signage are meaningful, and the impact they have on people is significant. What the Signs Say argues that the public language of storefronts is a key component to the creation of the place known as Brooklyn, New York. Using a sample of more than two thousand storefronts and over a decade of ethnographic observation and interviews, the study charts two very different types of local Brooklyn retail signage. The unique and consistent features of many words, large lettering, and repetition that make up Old School signage both mark and produce an inclusive and open place. In contrast, the linguistic elements of New School signage, such as brevity and wordplay, signal not only the arrival of gentrification, but also the remaking of Brooklyn as distinctive and exclusive. Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr, a sociolinguist and an anthropologist respectively, show how the beliefs and ideas that people take as truths about language and its speakers are deployed in these different sign types. They also present in-depth ethnographic case studies that reveal how gentrification and corporate redevelopment in Brooklyn are intimately connected to public communication, literacy practices, the transformation of motherhood and gender roles, notions of historical preservation, urban planning, and systems of privilege. Far from peripheral or irrelevant, shop signs say loud and clear that language displayed in public always matters.
Author: John A. Jakle Publisher: University of Iowa Press ISBN: 1587294826 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
Signs orient, inform, persuade, and regulate. They help give meaning to our natural and human-built environment, to landscape and place. In Signs in America’s Auto Age, cultural geographer John Jakle and historian Keith Sculle explore the ways in which we take meaning from outdoor signs and assign meaning to our surroundings—the ways we “read” landscape. With an emphasis on how the use of signs changed as the nation’s geography reorganized around the coming of the automobile, Jakle and Sculle consider the vast array of signs that have evolved since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Author: Joan Holub Publisher: National Geographic Books ISBN: 0399172254 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
When the road signs take a vacation, chaos and hilarity ensue--and they quickly learn how important they are. School is ending for the summer, and the stick figures on the school crossing sign are jealous of all the vacation plans they hear the students making. The stick figures work hard--maybe they deserve a vacation, too! So they abandon their signpost and set off on an adventure, inviting along all the other underappreciated road signs they meet on the way. It's all fun and games for a while, especially when they stumble upon a fantastic amusement park. But the people they've left behind are feeling their absence, and soon there are traffic tangles and lost pedestrians everywhere. The signs are more important than they realized, and now it's time for them to save the day!
Author: Martin Treu Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 142140494X Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 429
Book Description
Treu tackles the architectural history and signage of Main Street and the strip—from painted boards nailed over crude storefronts to sleek cinemas topped with neon glitz. Honorable Mention, Architecture and Urban Planning, 2012 PROSE Awards Signs, Streets, and Storefronts addresses more than 200 years of signs and place-marking along America’s commercial corridors. From small-town squares to Broadway, State Street, and Wilshire Boulevard, Martin Treu follows design developments into the present and explores issues of historic preservation. Treu considers “common” architecture and its place-defining business signs as well as influential high-style design examples by taste-making leaders. Combining advertising and architectural history, the book presents a full picture of the commercial landscape, including design adaptations made for motorists and the migration from Main Street to suburbia. The dynamic between individual businesses and the common good has a major effect on the appearance of our country's Main Streets. Several forces are at work: technological advances, design imagination and the media, corporate propaganda, customer needs, and municipal mandates. Present-day controls have often led to a denuding of traditional commercial corridors. Such reform, Treu argues, has suppressed originality and radically cleared away years of accumulated history based on the taste of a single generation. A must-read for city planners, town councils, architects, sign designers, concerned citizens, and anyone who cares about the appearance and vitality of America’s commercial streets, this heavily illustrated book is equally appealing to armchair historians, small-town enthusiasts, and lovers of Americana.
Author: Adrian Frutiger Publisher: ISBN: Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
Discusses the elements of a sign, and looks at pictograms, alphabets, calligraphy, monograms, text type, numerical signs, symbols, and trademarks.
Author: Phil Baines Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 1856693376 Category : Design Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
Letterforms surround us: inscriptions or names on buildings, directional signs for road networks, and signs within and around buildings. This book focuses on the letterforms and typography found in public places that help us to navigate towns, cities, and countrysides and that contribute to a sense of place. Featuring 700 color images of examples from around the world, it discusses the function and execution of signage. Part resource, part celebration, it brings together material that is of key interest to graphic designers, lettering artists, architects, and all those who are concerned with how towns and cities look and function.
Author: American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Task Force for Roadside Safety Publisher: ISBN: Category : Roads Languages : en Pages : 560
Author: Shonna Trinch
Author: John A. Jakle
Author: Joan Holub
Author: 
Author: Martin Treu
Author: Shelly Lyons
Author: Adrian Frutiger
Author: Phil Baines
Author: Dorling Kindersley Publishing Staff
Author: American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Task Force for Roadside Safety