On a recent trip to London, one place I visited was Brick Lane. It is really changing to a desired and 'cool' place to live. One thing I noticed was that there was typography everywhere! The streets were coloured with it. On the right is one great example where the whole side of the building was covered in type. I love the high contrast of bright colours to the black background. Usually so many colours wouldn't work in a piece of design let alone typography but here the black separates them and each letter in its own is a piece of art.
The typeface is a bold san serif and is repeated behind the letter down and to the right to form a drop shadow. The top and the right half of every letter is shaded in a different colour to give an almost 3 dimensional appearance.
Each letter is legible but the piece as a whole is unreadable as you can see from the lower picture. The kerning is quite large to allow for the drop shadow and the sheer size of the letters on the building make it hard to read from a distance especially because there is a building in the way on the other side of the street.
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On the other side of the street was the word 'pro' written in a very urban font. It has again got a use of bold bright colours and compliments the opposing piece. However this type is a serif bold font. The small counters and detailed bottom of the stems would make the letters hard to read if they were a smaller size. They look more like a piece of art than typography but this does definitely fit in with the area and brings the street to life. This typography attracts young adults that are maybe a bit 'edgy' or 'individual'.
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