Link love

A couple of days ago we got a darling email from Katie in Missouri, telling us that Draplin's blog "was saying how great your stuff is. So I checked it out and WOW you guys are great. I really dig your stuff. Keep doing what you do. Your style is totally inspiring. LOVE IT!" So, I looked up Draplin, and he's got himself a fun little corner of the web.  Kind of a link aggregator, mostly of nifty design ideas, mostly of an industrial post-war era vibe, but of plenty more besides.  Google finds us in there a couple of times at least, most recently this past week, wherein he offers us his design services--which, given the kinds of resources I've been enjoying lately, could work well for us all; and last month a Draplin reader sent him a link to our Flickr set, which he seemed to think showed the "state of contemporary signage" in San Francisco.  I only wish we were so omnipresent!

While I was searching those out, a mention in another design blog, Neusblog, showed up, too.

Might as well take this opportunity to throw out a few more self-referential links that have popped up on our radar lately: we have someone coming in to practice brush lettering, who'd read about us on Grain Edit (now that I look at it, seems that post came via Draplin, too). They're talking there about the Sign Painter Movie project, for which we were interviewed at the shop back in April.  On the movie's blog there's a picture of Josh painting the transom at Benny Gold's, who himself posted some shots of the work we've done for him, in a couple of places online.

Now, I think I'm gonna go while away some afternoon over Draplin's way...

A bite of big apple

On the advice of our old-timey sign painting colleague and wall-dog-to-the-trade, Bob Dewhurst, I sought out this excellent picture book of New York city storefronts, called simply Store Front.  It's not strictly about hand-painted signs, of course, as fewer and fewer remain.  The pix in the book date from the first few years of the current century, and are interspersed, every few pages, with transcribed interviews of some of the proprietors.  It's alarming how many of them have closed shop in just the few years between their interview and the book's publishing in 2008.  We can only guess how many more so in the few years since. I feel like I've been gently nudging New Bohemia's design portfolio into more of a mid-20th century direction in my tenure here, and this book is a hodge-podge treasure trove of such evocative colors and shapes.  It moved me further to pick myself up a copy of Shop America, a Taschen tome on storefronts of this era, worked on by Steven Heller, who has compiled a lot of terrific lettering design reference books for Chronicle Books.  That deal was sealed for me, when the sole negative Amazon review said, "Has diagrams and font types, window measurements, etc. All tech stuff that's not really interesting to me."

I learned recently that Urban Outfitters is opening a store in NYC, styled to look like it could be one of the city block panorama shots from the Store Front book.  (UPDATE: Just learned the faux storefronts are, er, less fake than may have been hoped for)

5-Pocket Shrink-to-Fit Button-Fly Signs

Recently, we had a flurry of jobs for different Levi Strauss & Co. projects in different places.  We scurried around their recently opened print shop, on Valencia Street, painting windows and projecting signs, and hanging marquee boards:

Then, at the same time we worked on a couple different signs for a "tailor shop" Levi's has opened, in its Union Square flagship store: some lettering with an illustration of a sewing machine on plywood, into which they had some neon inserted, and some window lettering on a little glass box office, into which they positioned a mannequin sign painter:

Somehow, we didn't get any pictures of the wood sign, but you can see a shot of it here, where you can also find a close up of the embroidery on the dummy's apron: on the left are the remnants of my name, stitched there by Tauba, for Christmas some years ago, after I'd suggested that I might be more proud of my job if I had my name on my uniform; and on the right, the shop name, stitched there by Scott's lady friend, Melissa, once we'd decided which apron we were going to "rent" to Levi's (I guess we're renting... I hope we're getting it back anyway!).

Jay, the designer/coordinator/our contact through the tailor shop project visited our own shop, soon after, and took some pictures.

Now, I don't know if it's just by chance simultaneous, but at the same time as all this was going on, someone related to some aspect of Levi's, in New York, booked us to do some signs for their showroom there.  They wanted a sign on a saw blade, like we'd done for Revolver earlier--only we couldn't find any new saws that same size and shape, so Scott cut one from sheet metal (toothless):

They gave us a washboard to paint on, which presented an opportunity to inflict more Levi's-related PTSD on Ken, and they gave us a really cool looking giant pair of scissors, with instructions to mount them on a board in such a way as to seem to be slicing a swatch of fabric.  I understand they bought the scissors at a store that sells only scissors and shovels for ribbon-cuttings and ground-breakings.

Welcome!

Welcome

The slumbering giant awakes! After pretty much neglecting our web presence for most of the past ever, we're finally (and, I hope, with a lot of continued help) putting a concerted effort into generating a useful stream of interesting and attractive stuff related to hand-painted signs and lettering, and whatever else is transpiring in life at New Bohemia.

I've enlisted a friend, Rani, to co-ordinate our efforts, and I'm nudging our assembled NBS peeps to (as I understand we say in the web business) generate content.  We're actually on Facebook--it's true!--and would you believe: we tweet!  Okay, so maybe it's me who doesn't hardly believe it... but regardless: I'm gonna keep yappin' and snappin', and postin' and hostin'...  er, I think "hosting" means something different online.  I mean "hosting", as in a party, so, um, you're invited!  Tell your friends!  I'll go see if I can find some appropriate music...

Jobs of Yesteryear

NPR has a feature up on its website about jobs that no longer exist, like milkman or bowling alley pin setter.  While it might seem that sign painting limps along, ever on the verge of extinction, I don't imagine we'll ever quite go the way of the lamplighter and the elevator operator.   On the other hand, one undeniable outcome of technical advances in the means of production, is that more and more people are producing their own signs without the apparent need of any sort of skill in design or workmanship...

While I'm 100% in favor of the DIY urge whenever and wherever it arises, and I generally support people expanding their judgement about what has aesthetic value--I guess I need, in order to preserve whatever validity attends a sign painting career, to remain ever mindful of having a gift here at NBS, to offer to aspiring sign writers and to local businesses and homeowners.

Hmm... now what is that gift, exactly?  I haven't spent enough time sussing that out...  Off hand, I'll say: years of experience, and some measure of intuition, in making things look good.  I'll keep pondering that, and see how I might better refine it...