Typophile

City identities

koen malfait

Hey you all,

I'm looking for some information about the graphical identity of big cities but it seems harder to find than i thought.
With graphical identity of a city i mean: their logo and the different applications (even a slogan?)
I really can't believe there's nothing to find on this topic!
who can help me out?

hi mr_ampersand,

Take a look at Studio Dumbar's identity for Rotterdam. You can find it at

http://www.studiodumbar.com/site/main.html

Click on 'Project's and then 'Visual Identity'.

There's also a fact sheet you can download.

Good Luck!

Tokyodrifter

Amsterdam uses Adrian Frutiger's Avenir (from Linotype) for their identity work.

Milan uses a custom typeface derived from Linotype Gianotten. An article about that project is in the current issue of the Linotype Matrix.

Koen,
You may also find this previous Typophile thread on type and the city of interest to you:

http://typophile.com/node/15005

ChrisL

Hi,
You'll find a lot of corporate ID informations there:
http://users.ncrvnet.nl/mstol/56.htm

More on Amsterdam at The FontFeed.

Ole Schäfer and Erik Spiekermann's FF Govan is based on the acclaimed type concept developed for Glasgow 1999 City of Architecture and Design. The Glasgow fonts were reworked by Schäfer and extended to include three widths each of six variations plus dingbats. The strength of the family lies in the innovative manner in which the three widths, two ascender heights, two descender lengths and dingbats can be combined. The results are striking and offer a unique way to create emphasis in a sentence or even within a single word. The expert sets also include a large selection of ligatures that represent the most common letter combinations in English, German and French. With FF Govan type setting becomes type sculpting.

www.atrissi.com
click on identities. Tarek designed the identity of Quatar in both arabic and english combined. Might be interesting to look at.

1. Transit system signage
2. Newspaper fonts
3. Street name signs
4. Architectural signs

For Toronto, I can visualize these all, and they provide the typographic personality of the city.

here's a design firm here in san diego that specializes in urban branding:
Bennett Peji Design

you have to click around a bit but this firm is working on a project called the Philipino Village. very interesting, if this is the kind of thing you're looking for info about.

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nc

Lord forbid The Big Apple, oops New York City didn't have an idenity or the state of New York. I Heart New York.

Andrew Haig discusses the use of ! exclamation marks in branding cities. It’s an interesting read.

The Destination !mark http://www.oneplusoneequalsthree.com/2006/01/thats_ncredible.html#more

I currently reside in Melbourne, or Me!bourne in that case! It appears to be set in Ole Schäfer and Erik Spiekermann's FF Info Text. I think it's a good choice.

However, recently, I have seen the exclamation mark disappear from some branding campaigns!

The city council in Sheffield (UK) recently commissioned their own custom typeface. Details in the latest issue of Eye. Excerpt here:

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=126&fid=554

Thanx guys!
Anyone knows if there exists something like a book with an overview of the european capitals and their identities? Could be nice, i think...

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