Intentional or not, that’s poorly done advertising.

Tasteless. Blech!

There’s a bigger image here, where you can read the names of the stores.

Yeah, really. How could they set those Futura caps so close together and *not* expect any criticism?

;/

Palatino, Futura — “...virtually the same font...”?

Palatino

You mean Optima, yes?

“was not intended to emulate any representation of the Memorial Wall.”

Surely they are not trying to invoke P. T. Barnum’s adage? “There’s a sucker.......”

Michael

Tyson’s Corner Center is shocked, shocked, that anyone would see a resemblance to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial!

Right John, Optima. I was having a Zafp moment.

BTW, apparently, in certain forms of layout, it doesn’t matter what the typeface is.
How did the Vietnam Memorial get to “own” a layout as simple as:
-All cap, run-on, list of names
-Reversed out of black

I would imagine there are a lot of donor walls that have the same spec.

Or was the key factor in this incident the superimposed rose?

The Mall at Tyson’s Corner is a hop, skip, and a jump from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. While the wall might not own that design (although I think that it does…), everyone in that whole area is familiar with its design. This is going to run totally different in DC than it might in Toronto, Oregon, or New Mexico.

You mean Optima, yes?

According to Hermann Zapf it’s actually lettering by John Edward Benson. I’m not sure who Benson is or if he sourced Optima in his design.

Or was the key factor in this incident the superimposed rose?

I think that the key factor here is running the advertisement on the subway line that takes people to the memorial. That mall has been running various wall-of-names ads for years, they just tend not to handle the ad placement so badly.

I think that the key factor here is running the advertisement on the subway line that takes people to the memorial.

Thanks for the info, James. The ad makes more sense now.

How did the Vietnam Memorial get to “own” a layout as simple as:
-All cap, run-on, list of names
-Reversed out of black

Maya Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, although I don’t know who chose Optima. More info on Lin’s design here. And, here’s a recent thread on the use of Optima in war memorials and gravestones:

http://typophile.com/node/56259

>According to Hermann Zapf it’s actually lettering by John Edward Benson.
>I’m not sure who Benson is or if he sourced Optima in his design.

Huh? According to Hermann Zapf where and when? In Linotype’s brochure for Optima nova, there is a photo of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial lettering, because it is done in Optima. For the same reason, in at least one of Hermann Zapf’s books, a picture of a rubbing from the wall appears as well.

You should know who John Benson is… aside from being a type designer in his own right, he ran the John Stevens Shop in Newport, RI for decades, and undertook a number of prominent lettering commissions in Washington, DC (and elsewhere). His son Nick runs the business now as far as I know. I’m sure that David Berlow could fill in more details.

The story that I had been told was that Maya Lin spoke with him about the lettering. It would have been too labor intensive to letter all of those names by hand, so a typeface was used instead. Apparently, Benson suggested Optima to her, and it was used.

Thank you Dan. Washington is replete with the work of Benson. He is doing a lot of sculpture now. It was Optima... the ad looks like Palatino, but my eyes are going, and it may have been a ploy to distance themselves from the wall while sticking to a “similar/familial” face (screen resolution is not so good).

The shop by the way is the oldest one of its kind in the U.S.

Michael

Went back to the link that Ricardo posted and squinted really hard... it is not Palatino in the ad.. Pretty good for old eyes : )

P.s. Try the JFK grave site and the Roosevelt memorial to name a few of his work.

Michael

Dan, I was referring to his 1986 lecture Public Lettering and Visual Pollution in which he refers to “…the names at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., designed by Maya Ying Lin in 1981 with lettering by John Edward Benson.” Now that you’ve explained it I guess he probably just didn’t need to mention Optima in the lecture because people would have known what he was talking about.

Being a VietNam vet and living 4 miles from Tyson’s Corner, this is not an issue of who owns all caps Optima lists. This is VERY clearly a take off on the Memorial. Anyone who thinks otherwise has not seen it. I am as fond as anyone of the visual pun but this is just insulting and in very bad taste. I hated the war then, I hate the war now, I hated being there and seeing a country being strangled by bloodshed there while another country, mine, was being strangled by lies and losses of its own. Whatever you think of that time in our history, the people who died there needlessly deserve better than this mockery.
Imagine if Bloomingdales’s or Macy’s in New York would place posters in the New York subways depicting people jumping out of windows of the WTC holding signs with the names of the various department store locations? This isn’t just a coincidental use of Optima, it is done on purpose. I can’t imagine the conversation at the presentation of those ads to the client. Sick bastards!

Like Dan said above, everybody who lives around here knows damn well what that is!

ChrisL

I think the highly reflective surface of the wall has more to do with its identity than anything else. Reverse any sans serif list in all caps out of black and put a high gloss over it and people will make that connection. The rose and other nondescript reflections really just put the nail in the coffin of at least a few peoples’ jobs.

OK, so that’s in bad taste.
But aren’t all forms of pandering to nationalism for commercial reasons equally in bad taste?
What about businesses that “fly the flag” (of whatever nationality)?
(I reserve comment on “Stars and Stripes” fonts.)

And a particular pet peeve:
WTF have national anthems got to do with professional sports league championships?!

I agree Nick.

ChrisL

But aren’t all forms of pandering to nationalism for commercial reasons equally in bad taste?

Yes. Especially the commemorative 9.11/US Marine Corp/Eagle U-Haul trucks. The only worse form of pandering are shitty businesses that tack “Christian” onto their name.

WTF have national anthems got to do with professional sports league championships?!

I’ve never been able to figure that one out.

It would be interesting to know about the person who did the layout. Is it really true that they knew enough about the memorial to ape it’s style, but not enough to appreciate it’s meaning? Could the work have been outsourced to another country or something? I could almost imagine someone using Google’s image search for ideas... but then not really understanding the image they were using.

It also reminded me of this:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-24-hitlerrestaurant_x.htm

Thanks for your comment and the photo, Chris. Well said!

I don’t know about any other athletic events, but the Star Spangled Banner was first sung before a Baseball World Series game during WWI. The song wasn’t even the US national anthem yet… that happened later, in the 1930s. But the resonance of this song before that baseball game went over so well that it was quickly incorporated as a feature in ALL major league baseball games, not just World Series Games.

Of course, like every World Series game—save the few in which the Toronto Blue Jays played—both teams competing hailed from US cities. But hey…