I love German Typography

We’ve been back from our Europe 2011 adventure for a month today. I’ll save my rant about the passage of time for another day.

I loved many things about Germany, but their typography stuck out for me. Here in Oakland, CA, the best thing about our street signs is that there’s an oak tree on them. The funniest thing about that is that oak trees are actually fairly hard to find around here… but that’s neither here nor there.

The typography is nice, clean and elegant on this Oakland street sign.  I love the ‘g’ and the spacing is nice…

…but somehow this German street sign has more even more elegance and nuance.  Perhaps it’s the perfect spacing between the letters or just the addition of the ß that adds that extra oomph I like so much.

This old train station sign haunted me for minutes.  I love the lowercase ‘b’, how it’s smaller at the bottom…and how almost illegible the ‘H’ is…  Though signs effectively need to be legible, this one blurs the line between beauty and function.

I love it!

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