Signs, Streets, and Storefronts

Signs, Streets, and Storefronts
Author: Martin Treu
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 142140494X

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.

Store Front Signs

Store Front Signs
Author: Leo Olmedo
Publisher: Leo Olmedo
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2024-04-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

In "Storefront Signs," authored by Leo Olmedo, a seasoned veteran in the sign industry with over 20 years of experience, you'll discover invaluable insights and expert advice to navigate the complexities of illuminated signage effectively. Drawing from his extensive expertise as a licensed contractor with a C45 for signage in California and UL Certified credentials, Olmedo provides a comprehensive roadmap for achieving success in signage projects. Unlock the secrets to creating impactful signage that not only enhances your business's visibility but also communicates your brand message effectively. Learn how to strategically select signage partners, streamline the permitting process, and implement maintenance protocols to ensure longevity and optimal performance. Packed with insider tips and real-world examples, "Storefront Signs" equips you with the tools and knowledge to make informed decisions and overcome challenges in the sign procurement and installation process. Gain the confidence to negotiate with local authorities and navigate zoning regulations with ease, empowering you to secure approval for your signage projects and propel your business forward. From design conception to installation and beyond, "Storefront Signs" is your ultimate companion for mastering the art of illuminated signage and achieving success in the competitive business landscape. Whether you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or sign industry professional, this book provides the essential guidance and resources to elevate your signage game and drive tangible results for your business.

Store Front

Store Front
Author: James T. Murray
Publisher: Gingko PressInc
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2008
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781584232278

Within the pages of STORE FRONT, the reader may explore entire blocks that have not changed much in the past century, engaging in startling encounter with contemporary New York. Details of an architectural and cultural heritage that is fast disappearing such as signage, architectural adornment and window displays are presented in context, as they exist on the street, all in amazing detail.

Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9781881337485

Traffic signs, sandwich boards and posters: Friedlander's portrait of words in the world For more than five decades, Lee Friedlander has repeatedly been drawn to the signs that inscribe the American landscape, from hand-lettered ads to storefront windows to massive billboards. Incorporating these markings with precision and sly humor, Friedlander's photographs record a kind of found poetry of desire and commerce. Focusing on one of the artist's key motifs, Lee Friedlander: Signs presents a cacophony of wheat-paste posters, Coca-Cola ads, prices for milk, road signs, stop signs, neon lights, movie marquees and graffiti. The book collects 144 photographs made in New York and other places across the US, and features self-portraits, street photographs and work from series including The American Monument and America by Car, among others. Illegible or plainspoken, crude or whimsical, Friedlander's signs are an unselfconscious portrait of modern life. Lee Friedlander (born 1934) began photographing in 1948. Among his many monographs are Sticks and Stones, Self-Portrait, Letters from the People, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan and At Work, among others. His work was included in the influential 1967 exhibition New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski. Among the most important living photographers, Friedlander is in the collections of museums around the world.

What the Signs Say

What the Signs Say
Author: Shonna Trinch
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0826522793

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.