[type] Now, This Is A Bad Sign (#1 In A Possible Series)

2837.Time to inaugurate a new, random, occasional series here in The Times, and I'ma calling it Now, That's A Bad Sign. It's the continuing story of public signage that, but for an inattentive eye, became a silly joke.

Our first semiotic delinquent was found hanging out, taking up space, at the corner of SE 105th Avenue and Stark Street, on the east end of beautiful downtown Russelvillelandia. It was a No-Right Turn sign, because Stark Street is part of the one-way grid stretching from SE 108th Avenue to SE 78th Avenue, where they merge to become Thorburn Street and go over the shoulder of Mount Tabor.

Anywho, I saw what I thought was a sundog and tried to get a picture of it (didn't get a good one) and decided I liked the fresh air so I called The Wife™ on the phone and said "Huns, I'm enjoying it out here, can you come collect me when you come out of the Dollar Tree?"

"Sure," She said. "It should be about five minutes."

Twenty minutes later (don't ask) I began to get bored (there's only so much cultural resonance to the westbound traffic at SE 105th and Stark in Portland), and began to take a close old look at the back of the sign. Now, The CoP puts little stickers on saying when the sign was erected and warning you that if you're thinking of messing with the sign you should find some other hobby maybe, and I took a close look at it. And I read it. And it said this:

Reading is fun-da-mental, boyz and girlz. And this one read thuth:

It is unlawful to remove or detach any official road sign
or traffic control device punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.

So, presumably, if this was a sign not punishable by fine and/or imprisonment, then you could mess with it all you want. But, still, the question is raised:

Just what exactly is a "sign punishable by fine and/or imprisonment" anyway?

Punctuation and grammar. It's the difference between Let's eat, Grandma! and Let's eat Grandma!

[Address Nerd] Street Blades? They're Always Clear In Philadelphia

2503.

I haven't had a good story about a street blade to tell in a while, but while digesting the information delivered to me in the last missive, I've stumbled on a really cool blade design, and couldn't wait to share it.

I'm surprised I haven't heard about the design of the blades in Philadelphia before. They're quite nifty. One of the classics of big-city American street blade style, I've found in my informal, note-free surveys, is the address index going on a little tab along the top of the blade. That way, the full street name - the specific (actual street name), generic (st/ave/ct/whatever), and directional (N, S, SW, etc) are the star. The address block is important, but most often, you're probably just interested in what street you happen to be on at the moment.

Most towns, in order to simplify street blade construction have, over time, incorporated the block index into the main blade, resulting in a design that uses a standard, simple rectangular blade shape, whose benefits in creation and production ought to be self-evident. But the classic tab on the top goes away.

Philadelphia's design actually creates the blade outline with the tab, effectively, built-in ... and including a lot of pedestrian-and-motorist location information either directly or indirectly. Here's one for the end of the 2100 block of West Kater Street, in Philly:

Intersection of Kater and 21st in Philadelphia
CC2.0 BY-SA licensed by creator Edu-Tourist

The sign is clear and beautiful, and is particularly notable for for including the directional not as a part of the street name (on the sign, at least) and as a data point in the block number display, which also gives you a clear idea of which way it is to the baseline - important in cities like Philadelphia, where the central business district is usually also the location of the local address grid origin.

Knowing this sign and getting a look at the sign on the other corner of 21st, you'd know at a glace how far away from the downtown core you are, and even be able to infer which way north actually is (remembering to account for the tilt of the local street grid).

The incorporation of the tab into the design of the sign makes for a non-standard shape, but presumably, Philly has gotten this obstacle circumvented. Notable as well is the practice of spelling the generic (STREET, in this case) out rather than abbreviating it, but removing the block number and directional from the main part of the sign makes this possible. Presumably if the specific were a particularly long word, that'd call for an abbreviation.

About the only drawback is that any geegaw personalizing the blade for the the district would have to go below, as in this photo: http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/070730/070730_philly_hmed_4p.h2.jpg (referenced in this discussion board thread at PhiladelphiaSpeaks.com), which is a little bit of a break from tradition - it's also customary to put such identifying plaques in the pride-of-place spot, along the top, as we do here in PDX.

But withal, it's a grand design, and we deem it nifty.

Technorati Tags: street blade gallery, street blades, philadelphia

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[Address_Nerd] Clearview Takes Manhattan

2502.

The next chapter in the slow invasion of Clearview onto street blades and directional signs everywhere unfolds in New York City, where word has been placed into the universe of discourse that they are preparing to spend $27.6 million to replace all city street blades, working out to about $110 per blade.

Sadly, reporting on the issue seems to harp on the cost. While it's not unremarkable, that's only half the story. Since introducing Clearview and making it the FHWA-approved standard for signs all over, in this lean budgetary climate naturally states and appropriate jurisdictions have complained about the extra cost.

Street blades don't come for free, of course.

Sadly, most reporting on it is a more coarse version of this article at The Consumerist, which does a disservice by not devoting just a few extra lines for some needed clarity. The New York Post, a news organ that I've learned to take with a huge grain of salt, does unexpected justice at this article by providing that clarity.

While it's true that $27.6 million is, perhaps tautologically put, a hell of a lot of money to spend on anything, it's not outlandish when it's pointed out that the signs will be replaced over an eight-year period at a rate (11,000/year) not unreasonably more than that of normal wear and tear anyway (8,000/year). The evolution seems most wise.

What I will take issue with is the sign formatting. While the traditional NYC street blade format - with the specific spanning the sign's height and the generic baseline-shifted up to align with the top of the big letters - works well with the old letterforms, it seems sort of awkward with Clearview letterforms.

I'd suggest a redesign, and humbly offer my services to the city of New York City.

(thanks to fellow Address Nerd Ben Lukoff for pointing this out)

Technorati Tags: Address Nerd, Street Blade Gallery, Street Blades, Clearview, typography, New York City

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[liff] What Will You Find Under A Bridge, But Troll Avenue? (Seattle)

2314.Tipped off by an offhand comment Benjamin Lukoff left on the César E Chávez Blvd, I paid a virtual visit to That City Up North to see if I could see something.

Legend has it, trolls live under bridges. Seattle, like PDX, has many bridges; and like PDX, in more than a few cases, the approach to the bridge is as a viaduct built over the street it debouches onto, creating a sort of "under-street" over which the bridge forms a ceiling. There are five blocks of this under the east approaches to the Morrison and Hawthorne Bridges, for instance, and SE Morrison, SE Belmont, SE Hawthorne Blvd, and SE Madison St run beneath them as streets open to traffic.

The George Washington Memorial Bridge, or the Aurora Bridge in the local parlance because it unites the sections of Aurora Avenue north and south of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, has several blocks of Aurora Avenue N under the bridge on the north side. It's said the Fremont Troll lived or lives there, and a great amazing statue of him (clutching a real VW Beetle) was constructed there in his honor.

So, too, was the street under the bridge so named, apparently in 2005, Troll Avenue N.

Google Maps Street View, looking west on N. 34th Street:

Right in the middle of the bridge, at the pier foot there, is the sign:

Once again, I do like the design of the Seattle street blades, though they aren't using Clearview. No time like the present, New York Alki!

Keep it weird, Seattle. That's why we love you.

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Design, Weird and Funnay, Troll Avenue, Seattle Street Blades, Street Blade Gallery

[pdx] Presenting The César E Chávez Blvd Blades (with Bonus Beech Street)

2312.As I mentioned yesterday, I was going to have César E Chávez Blvd blades for posting today. And I do try to live up to my promises. Here we go.

The unveiling and a ceremony happened in front of the Central Christian Church, 1844 SE César E Chávez Blvd, at the cross street of SE Stephens Street. Across the street is another church, the Temple of Praise, and nothing against the Central Christian Church, but it made a much more attractive backdrop (and it was easier to lens the pics from the former's parking lot, actually …)

The new Blades are the recently-evolved Type 3's, and the same sensitivity to leading, kerning, and tracking are evident. That's still a good looking Clearview sign, dang it!

The type is the right size, easy to read, aware of its baselines, and the generic and the block index align very nicely. This is a tightly-designed piece.

The signs will co-exist on SE 39th Avenue for the next five years, as per standard PDX practice. The buzz I heard (I thought it was via Mayor Sam's twitter stream, but I'm wrong, it seems) is that they'll come down and be sold or auctioned off for charity's sake. I'll look for confirmation of that.

Despite the ballyhoo of the signs being installed "from Hollywood to Hawthorne", they were only installed at one place each in Hollywood and Hawthorne. The above is Hawthorne's intstallation. The following two are from the so-far sole Hollywood installation, the overheads at the Broadway/Sandy/39th plenum, just north of the Banfield Freeway:

This is the overhead looking west on NE Broadway from CEC. Yet another evolution for Portland street blades: The overhead blade looks like the car-level blade – note the formatting of the generic and the block index, and the directional:

A very high-information sign, indeed. If you go south on NE 37th Avenue, just a couple blocks west, and approach the traffic distrbutor that encourages you to choose either Halsey Street eastbound or CEC soutbound, you'll now notice the directional sign points to César E Chávez Blvd South, and they're all in Clearview now.

Yes, I luves Clearview. Sosumi. I'm a type obsessive as well as a street blade obsessive.

Moreover, the inclusion of the accute accents impart a definited sense of sophistication. One of the things I regret about English is no diacritics, no umlauts, no accents. Well, just write about CEC Blvd, and you have them (Fellow sign obsessive Ben Lukoff also reacted positively, and he, too, has a good eye).

Oh, yes, the bonus: the Type 3s are up at the corner of NE 57th Ave and Beech Street, too:

Actually, this is along the side of 57th along the cemetery fence, but you can't miss it. An embarrassment of riches today, for sure – history no matter which way you look at it, and attractive, grown-up-city street blades slowly but surely populating the best city in the world … my home, Portland, in the state of my birth, Oregon.

O yea.

Technorati Tags: Cesar E Chavez Blvd, CEC Blvd, Portland, Oregon, Hollywood District, Hawthorne District, Street Blade Gallery, Street Blades, Sign Design, Clearview, Typography

[liff] Gang Aft Agley - César E. Chávez Blvd Pix To Come Tomorrow

2311.As I tweeted and announced on @SJPKDX and facebook.com/samueljohnklein earlier today:

They're hanging the first Cesar E. Chavez Blvd sign today, at the corner of CEC/39th and SE Stephens Street in Portland. I'm planning on being there with a camera to get the first pictures on line - if possible.

As it turned out, not possible. Such is the gentle tyranny of having a third-shift job in 10-hour shifts. I did get straight home, straight to bed, and didn't wake up until after 1 pm. Sic transit gloria.

But I did get a report from KGW-TV to share with y'alls. Here it is:

It gives you a good idea of what the overhead signs look like, and they most likely look a great deal like the street-level blades.

Of particular and delightful interest is the accent marks over the vowels e in César and a in Chávez. In Spanish, these indicate which syllable is to be stressed and, I understand, only occurs over the vowel. Presumably, this is why we pronounce the name SAY-sar SHA-vez instead of say-SAR cha-VEZ. What's delightful about it is that, as Ben from Seattle tweeted at me, they don't have those on Seattle's street blades – and I've always felt Seattle's were a bit more sophisticated than Portland's.

Well, that's the genius of Clearview. FHWA sign fonts apparently don't have this standard.

I better stop writing or I'll have nothing to accompany the pix with. Tomorrow morning, when I'm on my way home from that third-shift job, I'll trip on down to 39th/CEC Blvd and get some pics for the files which I will perforce share here, and the taking of which will be unencumbered by having to rush through Friday traffic and not getting enough shut-eye.

Technorati Tags: Cesar E Chavez Blvd, Portland Streets, Street Blade Gallery, PDX Street Blades, Street Blades

[design] Redwood City CA: Funny, Slightly Sarcastic Speed Limit Signs

2310.Redwood City, California, understands one thing about delivering a message: if you do it with humor, people will more likely remember the message. On the streets of Redwood City, then, observe that this municipality likes to remind you that there are such things as speed limits with a message delivered on wry:

Yeah. C'mon, big boy, it'll still be there when you get there. Get on your big-boy pants and obey the rules.

And if you still want to speed, remember, you'll just get scheduled for traffic school on a weekend day you'd rather be somewhere else:

Are we getting through to you yet?

Thanks for the smiles and the photos to my SF Bay Area Semiotics Bureau Chief, Sharon K.

Technorati Tags: street signs, funny street signs, funny but real street signs, Redwood City CA

[Address_Nerd] New Portland Street Blades Evolve, and More Clearview Type

2306.We haven't had the chance to go on sign safari for a long time, the only explanation being It's Complicated. But we finally have bagged some big game, and I'm actually delighted to say that the design of the next generation of Portland street blades is evolving in attractive and designerly ways that can only imbue the heart of an Address Nerd with glee.

I first saw this example of design at the corner of E Burnside and SE 103rd Avenue, in the Russellville area of outer eastside Portland. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first chance I got to actually snap a picture is here, and E Burnside and NE 68th Avenue, which is just down from the brow of the hill where you shunt off Burnside via SE Gilham Avenue to get to Thorburn Street and downtown Montavilla:

This blade is on the south side of E Burnside; the blade reads NE 68th Av because the street only extends north of Burnside at that point. A close look at both blades reveals a designerly concept known as hierarchy at work:

Note the directional and the generic are the same size and weight. The specific ("Burnside") stands out; if you're glancing at any speed, you'll take in that you're on Burnside in a flash.

Same as the named-blade, the numbered blade shows the same sense of hierarchy. Note also that on both blades the baseline is shared between the big letterforms and the small letterforms – and the ordinal, the "th" on 68th, now is rid of the awkward capital letter we saw on the sign at SE 47th and Hawthorne Blvd. Compare:

Also, the letterspacing overall is exactly what it should be – everything lives comfortably on the blade, nothing's crowding yet everything has room to breath. Likey? You bet! Notice also the lack of a white margin all around. I liked the white margin at first, but the lack of same is actually an improvement.

I'm really starting to hope the blades are evolving in that direction.

Also sighted: This set at NE 42nd and Halsey, directly across from the TriMet Hollywood Transit Center/MAX station, and on the same block as the Hollywood Trader Joe's Market:

We now have a very clear idea of how the blade sets will look when mounted as a corner assembly. Particularly attractive is the way the block face number now lives comfortably in the area above the street generic abbreviation – on the previous blade versions the block number sat in the upper left corner, awkwardly and a bit uncomfortably – as above, the letterspacing and leading is immaculate and exactly appropriate.

It's not just the street blades that are getting the Clearview treatment. Directional signs that have sprung up around the Hollywood business district also use it. Here's one directly adjacent to the above blades:

That's Clearview there, spelling out the name Tillamook St. The harm to letterspacing for letterforms this big is pair-to-pair kerning, and I can find little fault with the job done here. Someone's really paying strict attention, and bravo!

Another thing you'll find in the Hollywood district is new signs directing you to the Banfield Freeway from the north side. These too are in Clearview, but the font is all caps (words like EAST, WEST, above the I-84 shield on the overhead signs coming down from Sandy Blvd) so it might not be immediately evident, but the trained eye will see. I was unable to get a snap this time around, but we'll return there maybe soon.

Finally to cap all this off, is the place I first saw the new evolution. SE 103rd Avenue and East Burnside anchor a new development which is part of the old Russellville nabe. You have to be going eastbound on Burnside to see this. as east of East 99th Avenue, you have the MAX making this old road a necessarily divided highway, but as can probably be seen from the eastbound E 102nd Avenue MAX platform, is this:

Naturally, that caught my attention immeds, for being both the same and different from the street blades we've been assaying for the past half year (or longer?). Here's the one for 103rd Avenue:

And here's the one for E. Burnside Street. Nota Bene the block face in the upper right corner here: it's the numeral 1.

Burnside Street, as nobody needs be told, is the address baseline; going east and west from the Willamette River's origin, the lowest possible addresses on crossing avenues will be found here, and the block index is the lowest address possible on the block you're leaving (or entering, depending on the direction of travel). We note that the blade for Burnside at NE 68th Ave actually has no block index, and my guess is that since it's on the south side of the street and 68th does not have a block at that point, you wont be leaving or entering any block at that point (at least without major damage to your car, major dismay on the part of a property owner, and a significant divot in the side of Mount Tabor). By this logic, I'd expect the blade on the north side of NE 68th and E Burnside to have a "1" on the corner of the Burnside blade – when it does finally go up, of course.

A particularly good day to be an Address Nerd, as well as a typographer. We feel fulfilled.

Technorati Tags: Typography, Street Blade Gallery, Sign Design, Portland, Portland Street Blades, Clearview, Clearview Type, PDX, Address Nerd

[address_nerd] New Seattle Street Blades, And PNW Address Nerds Unite!

2251.Benjamin Lukoff, a Seattleite with whom I'm fortuned to occiasionally communiciate with, has an article up on Crosscut.com about the Seattle street blades which are being gradually rolled out, coincidentally at more-or-less the same time Portland's are undergoing a gradual change.

The observation is particularly fun because, just as the leaves are going from green to brown, so are the the Seattle street blades:

Photo from Benjamin Lukoff's flickr stream here

Actually, not all of the Seattle blades are brown, just the ones on Seattle's network of Olmstead boulevards, those city-spanning parkway blvds like Ravenna Blvd or (as above) Lake Washington Blvd and Interlaken Blvd that were inspired by the Olmstead Brothers' park plan for Seattle.

Ben points out that this change has been in the works for a while:

Yet it turns out that we approved this project in 2006 as part of the Bridging the Gap levy. Since then we've begun replacing signs at all our nearly 13,000 intersections, as the aluminum ones installed in the 1960s have definitely begun to show their age, and the new fiberglass batch is larger and more reflective. In a sense, we're finally catching up with the rest of the country. Our timing may not have been perfect, but we'd better pray for strong stomachs, because this project is scheduled to go, according to a report in The Seattle Times, until 2016. (On the bright side, that leaves plenty of time for you to pick up your favorite old sign at the city's surplus warehouse.

The material appears to be the same that we here in PDX are seeing going up on our new street blades.

The new Seattle design not only includes a design for streets and roads but also for pedestrian stairways and paths that happen to be in the streets right-of-way and trails (such as the Burke-Gilman Trail), with a walking-man pictogram similar to the ones we see on our walk-signals. Very nifty.

Ben does point out that, as I've seen in Portland, some mistakes are obtaining. No misspellings yet, but directionals are being left off and some signs are a little inscrutable.

It is becoming apparent that Clearview, the font, is catching on all over. Seattle's signs are using it too, and the reputation of mixed-case type is being forewarded thereon.

The real gem is that Ben links two other of us Address Nerd (or sign-obsessives, if you will). The other one is one whom I've enjoyed, Morgan Wick; the other is, of course, my own self. It made my day when I saw he linked me to the work "odd", which made me laugh out loud.

Address nerds go viral? Maybe. And here I thought I was the only one, when I started. Nifty.

Ben's full flickr stream is here. Also very nifty. Don't miss the "Gently Used Kids Sale" while you're at it. That Seattle – so inscrutable.

Technorati Tags: Address Nerd, street blad, street sign design, Street Blade Gallery, Crosscut, Samuel John Klein, Morgan Wick, Benjamin Lukoff

[pdx] Hawthorne: Tales Of Typographic Boulevards

2188.Portland's Hawthorne Blvd, at about 7PM, on an overcast, famously-Oregon summer evening:

Looking west from SE 47th Avenue, just where I took the sign blade pictures in the previous missive. Yes, it is gloomy and kind of dark. After the hellish heat wave Oregon just endured, you won't find me complaining. Actually, too much clear, bright weather makes me edgy. But then, I was born here in Oregon.

A couple of examples of typography and architecture that contributes to the famous Hawthorne feel and atmosphere caught my eye.

JaCiva's Chocolatier was founded by a man named Jack and his wife, Iva, and it's pronounced that way. You may think you know Oregonized confectionary with Moonstruck, and it is good stuff, but for real local flavor, JaCiva's in the place. The logotype on the sign is completely designed here (I'd be surprised to find that was an actual typeface) and it uses the idea of soft graceful curves and swashes to impart a sense of luxury.

The type in the old Portland IMPACT community service center logo is Koch's famous Neuland, a font that gives the impression of hand-hewn craft. The simplicity of it, combined with the whimsy of the figures and the flat brown tone, deliver a message of humility and approachable help. The reader board's message of E HAVEMOVE RN EWA DD RESS . BURNSID delivers a message that is perhaps in code.

Portland IMPACT have in fact removed to a different address on E. Burnside and have updated their look and name. They are now Impact Northwest:

… the colorization fo the logo is inspired and fun, at least against a light background – the type's a little uninspired though – in my opinion.

Part of the charm of Hawthorne, as I alluded, is the architecture, and along the 4700 block, on the south side, are some charming old commercial fronts that I hope aren't replaced by condos any time soon:

The signage on the places are as eclectic as the variety of people you'll meet on Hawthorne. Hawthorne Vintage, there on the right, has a hand-done sign that is just fun with its funky type and bouncing color balls. Timbuktunes World Music has a mashup with type inspired by Art Deco, purple and green colors, going for tradition and non-tradition all in one fell swoop – and somehow, despite having two colors that you don't think would work together, they do. The CPA office on the far left – the type and presentation is staid and boring, but you don't want to be entertained by your CPA. You want them to be dependable, expected, and expert.

I know the type is hard to see in the photo. Go down there maybe and enjoy the atmosphere in person, yes? Maybe I'll be getting better photographs later on.

Finally, just a mysterious two-storefront building immediately west of that:

Isn't that wonderfully anonymous? The paint, put on for the sake of argument; the architectural touches, which suggest Art Deco; if you get up close, the transom-level windows have this wonderful frosted rippled glass which you used to find everywhere. Nothing special about this, but everything wonderful. This little building really captured my imagination.

All of the above can be found on upper Hawthorne Blvd between SE 47th and 48th Avenues.

Gloomy late afternoons in Portland, Oregon. Definitely nothing like them anywhere else.

Technorati Tags: Typography, Hawthorne Blvd, Portland Landscapes, Portland Street Scenes, Sign Design, Street Typography

[pdx] New Street Blades Sighted: SE 47th And Hawthorne

2187.Another new street blade set, picture-perfect, SE 47th Avenue and Hawthorne Blvd, by the Hawthorne Vision Clinic. Type face: that beautiful, sophisticated Clearview:

What really caught my eye is the tracking along the whole of the specific and the directional. The letterspacing on this sign is, while not being immaculate, about as close to perfect as I've seen on one of the new breed of street blade. Also, the line-spacing (leading) between the 1500 and Blvd is appropriate. The display seems very un-forced. All the type in this blade lives where it's supposed to. God is indeed in His Heaven.

And, for the numbered avenue:

Not bad, either, though there's more space between the directional and the specific than there is between the specific and the generic (notice how the 'Th' superscript seems to invade the space between it and the AV?), making it feel unbalanced.

This is a valuable sighting because we can now have some idea of what this style will look like for the longer street names. I have yet to see what a Martin Luther King Blvd blade (or a Cesar E Chavez Blvd blade, for that matter) look like – those will be the defining example on the long street name.

Speaking of Chavez, no blades are as-of-yet up along Thirty-Ninth Avenue (at least the segment between SE Hawthorne Blvd and East Burnside Street). It's a forlorn hope to think that I'd be the first person to get a picture of it, but it's my forlorn hope.

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, PDX Street Blades, Hawthorne Blvd, Clearview, Clearview Font

[pdx] New Street Blades In SE and SW, and We Suggest A Transitional Form

2183.More new street blades out and about; this time we find the new format in SW Portland, in the Johns Landing area.

The area called Johns Landing is found along the Willamette River on the left bank, south of the new condo desert of SoWa. It centers on the venerable WaterTower shopping center and is served by both SW Macadam Avenue and SW Corbett Avenue; Macadam is, of course, the main road between Portland City Center and Lake Oswego City Center. Some of Portland's most notable broadcasters are also in this area, espcially notable is PDX's Clear Channel cluster, KEX, KPOJ, and others in the studio building in the 5000 block of Macadam.

SW Richardson Ct is the 5100 block, and here's a picture of that assembly.

The Richardson Court blade looks like it could use a bit of kerning between the S and W in the directional:

… Richardson Street and Court form the 5100 block south of Burnside. The blade for SW Macadam Avenue here missed something though:

… the block index in the upper right hand corner, which should be 0500 at this point. It's omitted from both sides. We've so far seen this at one other intersection in town, SW 57th and Barnes:

… and it frustrates us. We feel that simply because the intersection is a T (and the person on SW Richardson Ct and SW 57th Avenue, respectively, will find it a bad thing to go straight through the intersection) this does not mean that knowing the block of the street you're leaving might not be a useful thing. Especially since, if you proceeded one block south, the corner of SW Mitchell St and Macadam Ave, you'll find an old-style blade assembly with an address block tab on both blades and it, too, is a T intersection, we are led to the conclusion that the omisson of the block index on these blades is just that, an omssion, and we kind of wish it wouldn't happen. Chances for information are really being lost here.

Speaking of old-style blad assemblies, a real good example of one is at the corner of the Water Tower Mall's lot, SW corner of SW Macadam and Boundary Street. Here you go:

There are a couple valuable things to notice about this assembly. With tabs on both blades, one has to be bolted to the bottom of the bottom blade otherwise the top blade will be obscured to the point that the top blade really can't be read at all.

If you've followed me at all, you know how to read this display; if you don't, this article will give you background, and if you've followed me at all, you know that that 0 in the 0500 is important and necessary and this article will tell you about that.

During the documentation of this trend we've noticed the advent of Clearview in the Portland signage with some happiness. We like Clearview a lot. There's a new example up, at SE 60th and Division (the part that goes south from Division which, due to being in a different plat than the part north, jogs:

The new font is visible on the SE 60th blade above, and here's the SE Division Street blade:

I am starating to be sloppy in love with the Clearview font and the way it's being used in street blades. It just looks more sophsiticated. Remember, since Division jogs north a block between 42nd and 82nd Avenues, it's actually the 2400 block, and a short, discontinuous street called SE Windsor Ct amounts to the 2500 block.

Moreover, the sort of blade that the Richardson Ct/Macadam Ave assembly represent seems to be a midpoint between the Classic Style and the New Style, having features of both … the layound and design of the New Style with the letterforms of the old style. We'll dub this the "Transitional Style", because it forms a bridge between the two forms.

Many of these can be seen embiggened at my Posterous stream here.

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, typography, sign design, type design, Clearview, PDX Street Blades

Another New Street Blade – On E Burnside

2148.One of the street blades we were out to get yesterday I missed putting in the big post a couple back, but there's also a new one on E Burnside.

This is East Burnside Street in the 9100 block, looking east. The car in the distance is just crossing the I-205 overpass.

Standing on the north side of the street at this point you are at the physical corner of East Burnside and NE 91st Place. Looking across the street, you can see this:

Atop that post, just visible in the foliage, is the street blade, mounted so as to identify the cross street to someone leaving NE 91st Place … though with all that foliate, we aren't quite saying "mission accomplished" here. However, it makes a first-class background for a close up picture:

The new sign, like the others we've been increasingly finding, is in the Clearview font.

The block index ought to be zero, and should read "00" in the upper right hand corner (which you'd read "zero-hundred" maybe). Although it is possible that it was deemed unnecessary to include a block number because it is the baseline and this is a well-known thing. Still, as a format-completist, I'd like to see the double-aught there.

Sign Safari: New Blades on outer Tibbetts and Taggart, And A Couple of Oddities

2145.We went on sign safari again today, and came up with some goodies, from one end of the east side to the other. New Street blades, with the new Clearview font, show how the new Portland street blade look is shaping up. We have a couple of oddities as well, one which proves an assumption we made earlier.

Not long ago, I don't remember why, I had an occasion to be along SE 162nd between Division and Powell, and caught a glimpse of the new blades in passing. Went back today, and here's what we got:

Zooming in for a nice, close look, we find that while the numbered avenue still seems to use the old-style glyphs:

… the named blade uses the new Clearview type (this is also kind of evident in the photo above):

The tracking amongst all the letters is rather appropriate, and nothing in the positioning of the glyps looks forced or awkward at all.

The ironic thing about this was, I had forgotten the name of the street, confusing it with another T-named street nearby – Tibbetts. I told The Wife™ we were going out to 162nd and Tibbetts to see the new blades. She wanted to do a little neighborhood cruising and we found our way to Tibbetts. What should we find at SE 167th Avenue and Tibbetts Street, of all things, but this:

Another catch! In constrast to the last blade set, whereas the blade for SE Tibbetts Street is in Clearview:

So, also is the numbered avenue blade:

The downstroke to the 7 is the dead giveaway where, but the subtle curves and tapers on all the glyphs should be obvious to students of the form.

This is additionally notable because it's the first one which is solidly away from any main thoroughfare. SE 167th and Tibbetts is in a sleepy corner of a remote SE neighborhood, which is still very charming, with mid 20th Century ranch-style houses and gently curving streets. Very pleasant area overall.

In the area, we also found an oddity. Street blades have been appearing on very narrow streets serving infill housing on greatly subdivided lots; these seem to typically be green glyphs on a white background, opposite the Portland standard. Given the look of the property this following street stub serves, we're pretty sure that these signs denote privately-maintained streets whose developers arranged to be integrated into the address grid for purposes of ease of location. This sign was seen along SE 162nd Avenue, between (as you might expect) Division and Stark Streets:

At least two notable differences are immediately apparent here. First of all, unlike any other sign of this type, the specific (HAWTHORNE) is larger than both the directional (SE) as well as the generic (CT). Situate as it is, we can safely assume that it was named as an extension to SE Hawthorne Blvd (it's the county standard to do things this way). Secondly, the post on which the single blade is mounted is not the round metal pipe, but rather more of a fence-post which is square in cross-section. Also, as you can tell by this photo:

It's built rather lowe to the ground. The city doesn't seem to mount blades this low without some sort of reason, which is usually apparent from the surroundings. There's no real reason to put the sign down this low – as a matter of fact, a taller pole would actually make it more visible. Also, something about the location of that sign within a private front-yard fence line strongly suggests that this is a private installation.

To close out this safari, how about something you may not have known: you're aware that any numbered street (except in Linnton) is an Avenue. How about one that's a Boulevard? For a while now, the section of NE 122nd Avenue north of Sandy, through Airport Way to Marine Drive, has been designated as such:

This blade is at the corner of NE 122nd and Marine Drive, but has been marked "NE 122nd Blvd". No apparent reason for this except, we guess, that 122nd north of Sandy very wide, high-capacity road serving the industrial flatland. However, though the signs along most of this stretch have it as Blvd, new signs going in at 122nd and Airport Way now denote 122nd Avenue, so maybe that designation is reverting.

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