Typophile

Very eccentric sign! Take a look!

dinazina

This eccentric sign is in West Seattle’s Alaska Junction. I’m strangely fascinated. What is your take, lettering experts?

1. The ornate gold & red headine: Is “Watch Batteries” the name of the shop? Seems odd!

Watch batteries, sinuous organic script, and climbing roses are things that usually would not go together, right?

Is the owner saying: “I do mechanical work for a living, but at heart I’m a sentimental old-fashioned lover of beauty and art”?

2. The second headline -“Fast Quality Repairs” - is in a completely different, equally ornate Art Nouveau style in small-caps lettering embellished with a wing and swashes, but the letters are oddly spaced and placed.

3. The phone number doesn’t match the other lettering in color or style. A thick blue outline doesn’t enhance legibility, because of the low contrast with the green background.

4. The (misspelled) phrase “Whole Sale Prices,” is squeezed right underneath the second phrase and overlaps the phone number, as if it was an afterthought. The snaky script does not match the headline style exactly (look at the W).

Then there’s the huge flower, and the pocket watch perched on top of the headline script, containing a giant diamond. The whole thing is set in a rusty metal holder mended with duct tape.

Is this a relic of the 60s? Was the sign painter stoned or tripping when he created this art? Or does it go back even further? Someday I’ll ask the owner

PublishingMojo

Folk art (and its eccentric sibling, visionary art) appeals to us because it displays imagination and manual dexterity in their raw state, unrefined by formal rules of composition or fitness for a practical purpose. Who’s to say that art nouveau flowers don’t go with watch batteries? Who cares if Watch Batteries is the name if the shop? It’s really the only piece of information their customers need to know. Who cares if you can read the phone number? This looks like a place that gets more walk-ins than phone orders anyway.
Watch Batteries and the phone number are almost certainly the work of the same hand (maybe the lettering artist for this album ended up fixing watches in Seattle). The white lettering was done by a different, less skilled hand, probably at a later time (perhaps painted over something else that previously filled that space).

dinazina

Love the album cover!

I see it now, the white lettering looks like it wasn’t part of the original design.

Thanks!

Gus Winterbottom

The phone number is for Western Jewelry and Coin Exchange, which goes a little beyond watch batteries but explains the diamond-in-the-pocketwatch logo. They have a web site at www.westseattlejewelers.com/coins/coins.htm.

PublishingMojo

The music is pretty good, too.

dinazina

Gus, thanks for that info. I was walking right by the shop but didn’t stop to get those details.

Nick Shinn

This kind of thing always throws me into semantic dissonance, and I’m like, why should I watch these batteries? And what’s so hard and fast about the quality of the repairs? And what would be a part sale price?

nina

And are those batteries biodegradable, or why is there stuff growing out of them?

BTW, that flower really reminds me of The Wall.

dinazina

I got more:


Compare the first watch batteries sign to this one - same business. At first glance, no frills...squeezing as many letters as possible, overlapping for maximum impact. But then I noticed the arched “jewelry” and the capital I with dainty dot added. It’s distinctive. Is this folk art also?


This is in the multinational immigrant ’hood. They sell
“a Lot of sea food,” I see. “Freshfish” is one word......why U.S. catfish? Is foreign catfish suspect to their American customers? “Free cut and clean” sounds like a classified ad in a gay alternative rag. The sign DOES have a sense of neatness, style and proportion...yet looks like it’s speaking with an accent. What would you call this style of lettering?


This restaurant is one of my favorites - but the sign hurts to look at it. The background illustration might’ve been peeled off a webpage. The word “Maharajah” is almost illegible. “Cuisine of India” has an outline so thick, the original font is almost submerged. The other text - what is that, Tiffany Heavy? Comments?


The Adult Superstore adds a touch of class with the Peignot style of font. (“Stan” the adult superstore guy added a nativity scene to their window at Christmas.) The tax guy was thinking along the same lines.

******************

I think Khmer lettering honestly does add beauty to the cheesiest surroundings. See below.

msmiths

Definitely multiple drug induced effort(s) is what I would imagine it would take to produce something of such eccentricity. (In regards to your first sign post) lol

daniel_poeira

I’m intrigued by “Stan’s Adult Store”. Where is the pursuit of happiness a crime? North Korea?

EColeman

>>I’m intrigued by “Stan’s Adult Store”. Where is the pursuit of happiness a crime? North Korea?

Well, this particular variety of happiness is a crime in Alabama and Mississipi.

dinazina

Ha! that’s right EColeman, there are many varieties of what some folks consider “happiness” that have local legislation forbidding them.

Gus Winterbottom

>Is this a relic of the 60s?

Perhaps Bob Masse, or one of the Retinal Circus artists, dropped down from Vancouver. John Moehring worked in Seattle as the artist for the Eagles Temple auditorium. Or this could be evidence that Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, Wes Wilson, or Victor Moscoso had a lost weekend in Seattle.

>maybe the lettering artist for this album ended up fixing watches in Seattle

Or Jon Anderson of Yes.

It’s possible that Dan Hicks did the cover art for “Where’s The Money” — he apparently did the covers for Alive & Lickin’ and It Happened One Bite.

kentlew

Roger Dean did all the cover art for Yes, including all that incredible lettering. He was one of my early inspirations (believe it or not ;-).

dinazina

Wow! very trippy, that Roger Dean art. I love the Celtic knot effect on the “Dragon’s Dream” lettering.

His site’s navigation is a little hard to read. I feel like I just swallowed a mystery pill.

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