Nice bold san serif font.

Well designed and lovely scripted font.

Carvel Robinson

Type & Media ADV 1167

1/31/14

Typography is mainly everywhere in this day and age. Not many people notice it but it’s everywhere. In my neighborhood Far Rockaway, there’s not many typography that’s located in that area unfortunately. Apart from stores, supermarkets, hospitals and schools there isn’t much type associated with where I live. When you look around it’s hard to find a place that has a unique kind of type that stands out from the rest. It seems as if everything that’s written in my neighborhood uses the same font, a lucky guess would be Helvetica. Mainly is an easy to read font and it’s used everywhere. The only place that might have a different kind of font is probably the salons/barbershops. Those place try and play around with typography a bit just to show a different type of feel to it. They also can do that because they already of symbols or images that portray what they are.  You won’t find a lot of type based design in my neighborhood. The most type based design you would find is graffiti and there’s barely any. I haven’t seen any type in my neighborhood where it stood and that’s memorable. Everything is mostly the same and is somewhat boring. It’s fun to see typography and different type treatments with words on buildings and even build boards, too bad you won’t find that in Far Rockaway. I try looking for symbols, signs or images in type on a lot of different places but could hardly find any. The closet I’ve come to finding image in type is the Key Food Supermarket logo and it just has a key in the name. Not really much of a typography design but that’s the only thing I can say that stands out from the rest. Hopefully in the future there will be more type treatment that goes into making my neighborhood a little more fun when it comes to typography.

My neighborhood is a quiet and calm area. Not much goes on. However, this relative peace wasn’t available many years back.  At one point in my neighborhoods history, small gangs existed, and they were quite active. As a result of their presence, there is a lot of graffiti on the buildings. Much of the graffiti has been painted over in the course of time, yet there still exists a few examples of the neighborhoods dark times. Of course, not all graffiti is related to gangs. A few vandals have left behind their marks as well.

My neighborhood now is composed of three large ethnic groups; Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern peoples. There are quite a few delicatessens around as well as a Mosque and Church.

A large number of Asians have settled into Broadway Ave, a few blocks away from where I live.

There is a lot of Chinese and Korean writing advertising their wares and businesses. Overall, my neighborhood is a straight reflection of the typography that is seen throughout the streets.

I am from Staten Island, New York also known as the forgotten borough. For the most part, my neighborhood is suburban, and kind of boring from my perspective. Originally, while photographing for this assignment, I wanted to capture some graffiti and different styles of decorative type. However, my neighborhood consists of many houses and small businesses. Working with my surroundings that I seldom notice being that I’m often out roaming the city or elsewhere, I began to see the significance of the small businesses and street signs around me.

The small businesses are mainly renovated houses or small buildings. You can pretty much find any small business in my neighborhood such as bars, real estate agencies, a yoga studio, tattoo shop, barbershop, corner store, and a couple printing shops.  The letterforms used for the small businesses are very cliché for their respected industries especially the tattoo shop. Being that Local businesses sometimes use each other’s resources, I drew the assumption that some of thesignage was made by the local print shops.

In addition to the small businesses, I also photographed some street signs. Some of the signs are specific to my neighborhood such as the “Jefferson St” and “Dongan Hills Ave” sign, and “Dongan Hills” train stop which is the name of the section of Staten Island in which I live.

After taking a walk through my neighborhood for the purpose of this assignment, I realized what the people around me haveto offer as opposed to me always travelingelsewhere. My favorite signs are the ones that remind me of the city or the urban areas in which I often hang out. I am fond the “

Your Choice, Deli & Grocery” store sign, and “No feeding the birds” sign located under the railroad tracks. I have a fascination with Corner stores/ Bodegas because of that what they represent in a community as a place where the people living in or passing through the are can go at any time to shop for things without traveling far. I also have a weird fascination with pigeons being that they swarm the city and roam freely like me.

–O’Nysha Thomas