This is the second instalment of my monthly-ish public lettering delivery. In a walk around Spitalfields for my PhD research, I photographed The Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor. This was a philanthropic enterprise, one of the many during the Victorian period, to feed the newcomer Jews that were arriving in London with no money and no connections. […]
This is my new summer resolution: to write one short entry, every month-ish, about something I’ve seen. Something = (architectural) lettering. A few weeks ago I went to Stoke-on-Trent to visit the local archive. The visit was not very successful and, I have to admit, I didn’t love the city. I about to give up when […]
A year ago I decided to upgrade my bicycle, I was using a very heavy and old one, nicely donated by one of my ex-flatmates. It was about time to have something nicer. I browsed online, and for my budget (not a lot) I decided that the best was a hybrid, fun to drive, but […]
This last Christmas has been quite interesting. I have spent them in London, for the second time, and I have used most of the time in doing some progress on my research about architectural lettering in commercial buildings. I am working now in what might be the main case study, the late London brewery Truman’s […]
By looking back at my Rolling Bibliography I’ve noticed that there is no city in the world without its very own book about (vernacular) public lettering. Although this is an exaggeration, it can be said that there are more and more cities being the object of such kind of books. More often [graphic and type] designers, photographers, and the […]
I cannot find a better way to recap the year 2014 —and incidentally to use this almost-forgotten blog— other than choosing the ten best lettering-moments of the year. I am afraid they will be my moments, those that had a singular meaning, of pictures that I took in places that I visited in Spain and England. […]
It’s been a year since I enrolled as a Phd candidate at Central Saint Martins, an academic year at least, and it’s probably about time to share what I am doing there. The goal of the first year here at UAL (University of the Arts London) is the so-called Registration, a formality that all […]
Back in 2005 I was living in the southeast of Spain, in the city of Valencia. I was studying an MA on Graphic Design where I met people as interested as me in typography. In no time my three colleagues –Rubén Arnal, Ainhoa Fernández and Ricardo Peña– and I were deciding to publish a new […]
Sometimes when I am in Spain people–friends and family mostly–ask me why I do love London, why I keep trying to survive in this city. Many times, honestly, I dont have a proper answer. I dont think there is only one response to this, but many little reasons, and they are hidden in the streets […]
Public lettering 3: Manuel M Smith and the Sota Building
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Although I grew up in the Basque Country, the first time I looked around in Bilbao in search of public lettering was on a visit with Catherine Dixon in 2013. Stephen Coles was right when he said that if you walk with Catherine you will see more. So we, well, probably she, spotted this architectural […]
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