Type Safari in Farringdon, London
A graphic designer’s obsession with a city’s visual landscape
If you have a friend who’s a graphic designer, you might have occasionally felt his or her attention drifting as you walked down the street together. You could be forgiven for thinking that we graphic designers are impolite or rude, but what you might not know is that many of us face a daily professional quirk. While the visual landscape of a city may appear to you as a big abstract composition, each sign, letter and poster is something we’re compelled to analyse. There’s a way to transform this obsession into a formal investigation — it’s called a “type safari”.
The expedition
A type safari is an expedition inside a specific territory in order to research and record the different graphic signs you can find inside this area — commercial signs, road signs, graffiti… It’s a great way to learn about the history of a place, and it can help you find your bearings when going somewhere new. The goal of a type safari is to find the signs that tell the story of a place, but also to look after the signs that would be “a treasure” — a unique piece of typographic inspiration that will hopefully influence your work.
When you think about Farringdon, what springs to mind? The train station, Fabric? What else? To explore the essence of the place, I decided to go on a type safari around Fjord’s new studio in the centre of the city in London.
Typographic jungle
Just like most other big cities, London is a typographic jungle. Just walk down one of its busy streets and you’ll be immediately surrounded by thousands of signs. It’d be a never-ending job to record all of them, so I choose to shoot the signs that seem specific to the area — with stylistic hallmarks we might not find elsewhere. I shoot examples that exude a distinct personality, originality, heritage. They needn’t be beautiful or professional — in fact I look for quite the opposite of the polished typography we see daily on our screens. I’m after a dripping stencil marks, ghost signs on buildings’ rooftops, faded lettering, letters that seem to survive for years, resistant to the continual regeneration of the city.
Territory
A moment of research allowed me to set the boundaries. “Farringdon” refers to the area around Farringdon station. While it has no formally defined boundaries, it seems the roads that contain the area are Clerkenwell Road to the north, Aldersgate Street to the east, Charterhouse Street to the south and Farringdon Road to the west. These are not officially Farringdon’s borders, but few institutions beyond them consider themselves located in Farringdon. I focused on the streets inside these boundaries and walked, camera in hand, ready to capture any interesting typographic signs that crossed my path.
Painted letters
Smithfield old market is a good place to explore an impressive history of typography. It’s changing considerably, and due to be transformed by a development plan but right now there are plenty of characterful remnants from the past, with traces of sign painting. What stands out are the hand painted signs around the market. You can still see some interesting compositions like the names of the traders, like Catering Meats or Denton Brothers, two names painted in bold letters around the market as a certificate of authenticity.
If you take a close look at the place and walk inside the paths of the market, faded painted utilitarian signs will appear. While most modern examples of this type of sign are standardised (mostly Helvetica letters on PVC), signs of the past are much more interesting. The example below shows that each painted sign is unique. Focusing on the word GAS, the letter A is excessively large compared to the G and the S which look almost condensed alongside it. We can also spot inconsistencies in the width of the G and S shoulders. These accidents could be considered errors today, but they’re actually adding a lot of charm to the word, and it make it unique.
Through the ages
The front of the Farringdon tube station building is a great example of typographic transition with two distinct styles living next to each other.
The Roman letters that signpost the entrance and the original details for the station seem to have been added when the building was first created. The letters on a blue background are set in Transport for London’s corporate typeface and are a part of a design system used across the whole underground network. A design system could be seen as a progress because it effectively helps the user to recognise immediately a tube station or read vital information, but on the other hand, you risk losing or diluting the character of the original typographic composition.
Another example that demonstrates different generations of typographies standing next to each other is building numbers. Most of the time, numbers in the streets — whether contemporary or old — show an amazing diversity and creativity. I found some treasures during this safari as a broad variety of styles flourish on London’s streets. One of my favourite examples is this Number 28, found on St John’s Lane. An elaborate and surprising example of a building number, and a bit bigger than the others, each character seems to be inspired by a different alphabet from a different period. This total freedom is what makes it so striking.
Set in stone
While a lot of buildings in the area have had a name or number carved directly on their front, one particular place is a perfect example of engraved and embossed typography. This last step of my type safari was the Charterhouse, an historic building that was at various points a priory, a mansion and a school. For each of its incarnations, typographic evidence remains. The type engraved on the tombs inside the chapels caught my attention — they were some of the oldest type specimens I found on my whole safari, and some of the most delightful for their diversity and originality.
A strong interaction
I started to get interested in typography a little over 10 years ago now, but keeping my eyes open allows my passion to be rejuvenated everyday with the new discoveries I make. More than just focusing on typography, this project allowed me to have a meaningful interaction with the area we have just moved to, and helps me start to feel a part of the Farringdon community. Going for a short walk every day in search of the unique signs led me down streets I wouldn’t have visited otherwise. The character of the Farringdon area has revealed itself a little bit more to me now. It’s quite likely that I missed some of the visual treasures, so if you spot any nice examples of Farringdon’s typography, please send them to me!
