Check out this neat project at CitID. Designers around the world are using typography to showcase their cities. Check out the Providence entry by AJ Paglia:
Also, I’m in love with the Chicago design. No Pawtucket yet, what’s up with that!?
Via idsgn
I really do like Chicago’s as well. My only beef with it is that it doesn’t seem to mesh with the “feel” of the city all that well.
Providence’s – ugh. I am done with this whole style. It just seems so empty and throwaway with no real root in Providence. Compare that to Portland’s with the hairy monster. That is deeply and irrevocably Portland. With Providence’s you could swap out any city and motto and achieve similar results.
Portland? Please. Seen it all before. I’m not especially impressed with much of anything coming out of the US. My favorite is Barcelona.
I am not wowed by Barcelona’s. I don’t know if the Portland bike monster one is the best but at the minimum it is clearly a Portland design. You could probably guess it without any identifying text.
Isn’t the mad peck ‘PROVIDENCE’ poster already established as the iconic providence typography poser? Seems to render this newer shepard-fairey-ripoff design pointless. The shown design is especially weak because its derivative of Fairey (Paglia freely admits its derivative of Fairey on his site), and more specifically derivative of Fairey’s more recent work developed well after he stopped working out of Providence. I would say the only other viable candidate for a real providence typeface would be the nearly unreadable but nonetheless excellent fort thunder posers.
Isn’t there something delicious about doing a Fairey derivative?