November 12, 2007
Duct Tape Irregular Semibold
Reader Cy Goldsbie sent us the above photos, taken at St. Clair West station, along with the following note:
These aren't the greatest pictures, but I think they're clear enough. The hand-written sign is one of two on the same wall just above the duct tape sign. I think I've discovered a new font that even Joe Clark doesn't know about. Of the font mixture of which he spoke, 'Duct-Tape' was never mentioned. As I've never seen it before, it's difficult to tell whether it's a bold, regular, or condensed. Much the same way that the original TTC font was an unofficial adaptation of something else, I believe this one is entirely original and may be the only surviving example on the entire line. Perhaps they are using it as a test and are planning to survey another 6 people, much the same way, if I recall correctly, that Joe Clark said that they did with the Sheppard-style signs.
By Jonathan Goldsbie in Design , Discovery! , Transit , hmmm... | Link | Comments (11) | Recommend this! (4) |
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We must petition the TTC now before these unique examples are removed and destroyed!
Compare to the Tokyo Metro equivalent at Shinjuku Station.
^
The difference between the Japanese ones and the TTC ones is that the Japanese ones actually look good.
Looks pretty readable to me!
But I think they used the American spelling of the plural of "bus" in the bottom-right photo.
I love how I have my own blogstalkers now. It’s also curious they are pseudonymous.
So here’s the first of what will be a continuing sequence of standing offers for people who disagree that the TTC æsthetic needs preservation to write reasonable arguments to that effect, under their own names. Publish them as widely as we publish our writing, then send them in to the TTC. Then we’d have something to work with.
I don’t see how this kind of anti-activism could possibly be worse than having an archæologist running the TTC who wants to spend 35 years knocking down every single station and rebuilding them with fake Helvetica on plastic panels. Oh, and caryatids.
Unless of course you’re just troublemakers with no actual point to make.
Duct tape forever!
They're just poking fun at the seemingly trivial yet actually important nature of TTC preservation. I'm not being sarcastic. Unless these people are writing letters in the real world to the TTC that your efforts are absurd, then there's nothing to worry about. I wouldn't classify this as real anti-activism. I myself don't want to lose the Bloor Danforth stations, but restoration attempts would be great like what will be done with Islington.
Lighten up Joe, it's just some harmless trolling. Stalking would require I seek you out, which I have not done and have no interest in doing.
As I've said in the past I put a functional and expanded TTC system ahead of typeface selection and fidelity when it comes to priorities they pursue. I'm not campaigning in favour of Helvetica or Arial, or writing diatribes about how those metal signs are the work of the devil and should be banished to the bottom of the ocean. I just don't get as worked up as you do about it — and from what I've seen you get pretty worked up.
On using a pseudonym here at Torontoist.com: Marc and David can contact me by email, which is my first and last name at gmail.com. Marc has also contacted me by Facebook in the past. So I'm not entirely anonymous here, at least to them. But I am to you. Why? Because why the hell shouldn't I be? Who the hell are you that you think you have some right to know? And what difference would it make?
I never said you were “anonymous.” What difference would it make if you published under your own name? You’d at least be honest. Try it sometime.
As for a rational signage system in the TTC, sure. That would not require knocking down everything else. If nobody were “worked up” on the topic, Giambrone would charge right ahead and do exactly that. Since you aren’t actually willing to stand up for whatever it is you stand for, and by your own admission this is mere theatre, one option you have is to shut the fuck up.
But that’s just me getting worked up.
Next time: We discuss how “trolling” of this sort is not “harmless.”
Joe, you're confused again: I'm not willing to stand up for what you stand for.
You would think a former Prime Minister would have better things to do with his time than engage in profane flame-wars over public transit signage preservation.
Well, Skippy, I don't! Since retiring from the PMO I have been nothing but bored, bored, bored.
Four fonts walk into a bar.
The bartender says, "Get out! We don't want your type in here."