Episode 11: Signs of the Times

Good signage is the perfect combination of form and function. Tracing the Roman origins of classic letterforms and why they continue to be relevant today.  First of a short series.

Transcript

Kevin: 0:05

Hello and welcome to another edition of Make Life Better by Design With me, Kevin Drayton. Well, the, the subject of today's podcast, it's actually far too big to be covered in a, in a single episode. So I'll be dealing with it in the next two or three unless something else crops up in the meantime to break the sequence. Right. What are we on about? Well, to give you a hint, I'm gonna tell you a brief story, first of all, and it concerns a trip my wife and I had to make a few weeks ago to a building in a town that we did not really know very well. So we set off and as we were approaching the town. We got caught up in some roadworks. They were roadworks at a fairly complex junction, which meant there were various diversions and lane restrictions, all sort of usual stuff with impromptu signs telling you. Um, things like no entry here, no left turn merging turn, and you had to keep your wits about you to know what was going on. We got through that and we approached the town itself. I put the sat nav on to help us find this particular building, and we then hit another. Something that made me think Satnav would say take the third on the right pine Street or something. And we're creeping along, looking out for the street, signs of the road, signs for Pine Street. And this was happening every few meters, obviously. Well. That's fine, but when there's a lot going on, it's heavy traffic and you are peering out the window trying to find these street and road signs, it's, it's not so easy. They're not always where you expect to find them, and often they've been defaced or obscured by something. Anyway, it's one of the things we have to live with nowadays. We did that. And we got to the building that we were going to, there's a big building. It was in fact a hospital, so you can tell the sort of size it was. So we find the car park and that's not straightforward. We had to work out whether it was a pay and display or whether you paid on leaving. We had to work out where it was staff only, uh, visitors. Much of the area, of course would be ambulances only. Anyway, we battled our way through that. We got parked up and went into the building. Now as anyone who's had the misfortune to be in one recently will know hospitals are massive organizations. In this particular case, it was, I think four or five stories, and that was without a couple of. Basement and lower ground levels as well. And there's signage and directional indicators absolutely everywhere. They're quite well worked out. Things like different departments are color coded, which helps and they're put in places where you would pretty much expect to see, helpful indicators of where you need to go. But then of course they get a little bit confused by things like, oh, this way to the cafe, or No, that way to the shop. So it's quite a cacophony of stuff going on. But indeed, we eventually got to the department. We were supposed to be going to, found reception booked in, and then of course, sat in the waiting room for ages and ages and ages, but nevermind. So that was that. Now, what's all that for? Why am I telling you about this? Well, because the subject of these next few podcasts. Is signage and letter forms, which at first sight is not something to get particularly excited about. But the things that really impress me about signage and letter forms are that they've been around for a heck of a long time, they're tremendously important in the very practical business of making sure people know where they are, where they're to go, and they also balance that with being an opportunity for some of the most gorgeous aspects of design in terms of letter forms, how they're created, how they're spaced. How they're mounted and they're all around us. It's something you can enjoy or indeed in for me, have to nash your teeth about on a daily basis because of course, like every other area of design, there's some. Absolutely astoundingly good and quite a lot that really should never have been put up in the first place. However, today I want to concentrate on one particular type of letter forms and signage, and that is inscribed or hand cut lettering in materials like stone or slate or marble, I'm sure you know, the sort of thing. I mean, now that practice of cutting letter forms in stone and marble and so on goes back a long, long way. Certainly as far as the, the Romans, and before, but the Romans really codified the whole thing and really developed it to a point where it was undoubtedly an art form. Many people tend to refer to Cha's column in Rome. There's being a good starting point for investigating letter cut forms. Troon, the Emperor Troon had a column erected in Rome supposedly to mark his triumph in the dosing wars, and at the base of this column. Which is an enormous thing. Big enough to have a spiraled staircase cut internally so that you can get up to a viewing platform at the top. But at the base of it, there is an inscription in what we tend to call Roman square capitals, letters that is around the base, and that's become a. Almost the the basis for subsequent Roman lettering forms. It's a classic. It's a good starting point. And of course, hand cut lettering in hard materials. Stone slate. As I say, and Marble has continued through the centuries and indeed continues to this day. There are some fantastic letter cutters working today and I would urge you to seek out their work if you can. Now, I did say hand cut because inevitably as technology has developed. Somebody has had the bright idea of automating the process of letter cutting, and you can nowadays have inscriptions cut in stone by machines, but I. One of the great things to admire about hand cut lettering is that it is an an art, a real art. It's not just a craft. The the formation of letters, the individual letters, the relationships between them, which vary of course, from word to word. So. Two letters spaced one way in one word may need slight adjustment when they're in another word. It's an extremely subtle process that needs understanding and appreciation, and I would say a huge amount of experience to get it absolutely right. The thing of course with stones is the very, very long living materials, which is why you can still go to Rome and look at the example we're talking about in Trajan's column, but of course Rome and much of Italy. Stuff to the gunnels with fabulous examples. So that longevity is one of the reasons why we have so many fantastic examples right through to this day. But just to. Focus in for a bit. The original square Roman capitals cut into Trajan's column, required careful formation in themselves as to how you actually formed that letter. And usually those are drawn out on the stone before, before the letter cutter starts with these chisels. And then the spacing, of course has changed, but each main stroke of those letters is formed by chopping into the stone, and you're forming like a V shape, like a little valley. And that's the essence of each of the, the letters. Now, when you finish a a letter. And you're doing it with, uh, stone mason's, chisels. You need to find a way to end that neatly. And the way to do that is what we now know of as a rif, those little twiggly bits on the ends of letters that are a way of allowing the letter cutter to remove his tools and, and end up with a very clean, crisp, pleasing finish to the letters. Now, getting a machine to do that is put your now on impossible. They tend to space letters by some formula rather than by responding to the requirements of an individual. Inscription And for me, I've rarely, if ever seen an example of machine cut lettering that doesn't look dead somehow against hand formed stuff. Incidentally going back to Trajan's column and the absolute brilliance and ingenuity of the Romans. The column is a very, very tall thing, and, and the inscription is only at the base, but it is designed to be read from below from somebody standing at the base of the column and looking up. And in fact, what the, what the Romans have done there is to adjust the sizes of the lettering so that as you look up, they look consistent. Right away through the different lines of letters. Brilliant. Anyway, as I said, it's a, it's an ancient form that survives to this day. We've got some tremendous letter cutters working today. Far too many for me to to note, but of course, because the best is hand cut and it is a long, and I was gonna say laborious process, but I think if you are into it and it's what you enjoy doing, it's not laborious at all. It's incredibly satisfy. Yes, I have had a go myself. If you're interested in letter forms it's very likely that you will at some point try a bit of hand cut lettering. Um, and no, I don't really have the patience to become a specialist at it, but I do admire those who do so. They're wonderful things. Hand cut lettering. They're expensive. They tend to be used because of the longevity for inscriptions, memorial tablets, um, sort of thing that's expected to have a long life. And because of that, the expense, the time taken and the longevity, some of the best places to see good hand cut lettering. Are in institutions places like churches and cathedrals, and indeed in colleges, um, venerable institutions and of course church yards, the amount of hand cut lettering you can see in church shards is limitless. Not all has survived as well as others. And you, you can see how time and weather have undone some of that good work. But there's a lot of really nice stuff there. The other thing I would say is if you are going to look at hand cut lettering, inscriptions on stone and so on, try and do it on a sunny day. And I say that because the, the cutting into the stone or the marble, whatever makes letter forms done in that way, three dimensional and not two dimensional. So as the sun will move across the face of, let's say, an inscription tablet. The depth of the incisions the perception of those inscriptions will change as the light moves across and it has yet another layer of interest to the experience. As I said, we've had a lot of really good letter cutters all through the years, right up to the present day. One of the ones that I most admired was a chap called David Kindersley, uh, who is dead now, but was working in the recent past, and he established a workshop in Cambridge where he worked and he also taught. He was one of these people who was able not only to do it, but to teach, uh, which is fantastic, and he, not surprisingly was responsible for a huge number of memorials and plaques and goodness knows what in Cambridge itself. Many of them commissioned by the colleges who got the money, who appreciated the quality. And expected the work to be around for a long, long time. One of the students who came to work with David Kindersley was a woman with the perhaps slightly, uh, unexpected name of leader. Lopez, Cardoso Kindersley. She, she started as a student, um, and she actually then became the partner of David, and indeed she took over the workshop after he died. Now she has written a very, very nice little book. Actually published by Cambridge University Press called Cutting Through the Colleges, and it's a guide to the work of the Kindersley workshop that can be found in the colleges in Cambridge. So if you are interested in the subject and you fancy a bit of more intense study, I would say go to Cambridge. Try and pick up a copy of this book. It was only published in 2010, so I'm hoping it's still available, still in print. And, uh, go and see what you can find as you walk around. There are a lot of other examples, of course in Cambridge other than in the colleges themselves. Uh, but if you can't do that, almost any church cathedral. Or gust institution of some kind will almost certainly have some hand cut lettering that you can examine and enjoy. And it is a great topic, but of course when it comes to signage, it's important that it does the job that it does. Send you in the right direction that it does identify the correct place that you want to come to and give you basic information. Now, the fact that it can be done in a very beautiful way, in fact for me it is one of the great art forms. The fact that you can get that combining the two just makes it the perfect only connect subject for me. On the other hand, I'll tell you a little story. One thing that happened to me earlier this year, in fact, it was on Easter Sunday this year. Easter Sunday a lot of people obviously away not working. But I had a regular 10 o'clock tennis club appointment on a Sunday morning. And on the way to the tennis club there is a car park, which has some bottle banks there. It's, it's all very close together. So if my tennis started at 10 o'clock, I set off at about 10 to 10, called into this car park, offloaded some bottles, and I thought, well, I've done that pretty quickly. I've still got. A couple of minutes to spare and it being Easter Sunday and me being a lovely man, such as I am, I scooted around the corner to the local co-op and I thought, I'll try and find some mini eggs or something like that that can be shared around to celebrate Easter at the club. So zoomed off. There was hardly anybody else in the car park at all. There was lots of spare spaces. I zoomed in, zoomed back and I, I cut it perfectly for time. I had three or four minutes to drive down to the tennis club with my goodies, feeling very pleased with myself, and as I got back to the carpark, there was a woman. Offloading bottles into the bottle bank and she said, oh, um, there was a chap over there, it's just been photographing your car. It's nice. And I looked round and there was a chap had just got into a car or a van, small van, and was driving off. So I didn't really think that much of it. Put my stuff in the car and I got in to go and drive off. And I noticed the. A little yellow envelope stuck under the wiper blade. Yes, I had been given a parking ticket. Now I had parked in a space between, uh, the last formal parking space and the recycling bins. It wasn't in anybody's way. It wasn't taking up a space for a disabled user or anything like that, but when the subsequent, what is it? Summons, I don't know, came through the post. You need a photograph of my car, and there was a photograph of the big sign, the big information sign at the entrance to the car park, which told you when it was open, blah, blah, blah. And it also said, of course, that it would be an infringement if you were not wholly parked with a marked parking bay. It's absolutely true. I was not parked within a marking bay in the sense that it had a white line, one side didn't have one on the other side because that's where the bottle bank tubs started. So I would urge anyone if there's a notice there. Take notice. They are there for a reason if only to give me something to talk about on a podcast program. So I'm gonna move on in the next couple of podcasts to how signage and letter forms have developed from the early stone cut lettering. But inter and as, just as something, uh, as a little end note for this podcast, the Square Roman numerals used on Trojan's column can be reproduced as. Two dimensional forms on paper or any flat surface in ink or whatever, and the same essential shapes work just as well in that form. The same can't always be said for the reverse process. Certain type faces, letter forms that you see on the flat, try to translate those back into an inscribed form, often meets with a disaster. But there's a world to talk about there, and I shall embark on the next episode very soon. Thank you ever so much for joining me. I do appreciate it. I hope we're gonna meet again very, very soon. Until then, thank you again and goodbye for now.