Germany

Karl Blaschke: The Sign Man of Munich

[This book review is reposted from the original on the Better Letters blog.] “Signwriters are entitled to their immortality just as are other artists and craftsmen” – Kevin Corrigan Kearns, Dublin’s Vanishing Craftsmen Signwriting is perhaps the least documented of the lettering disciplines; it’s nature is ephemeral versus the relative permanence of calligraphy on important […]

18 May 2018

Hamburg Alphabet by Chris Campe

Hamburg Alphabet by Chris Campe is a delightful expose of one German city’s signage and public lettering. Featuring 220 images it catalogues these examples in alphabetical order according to the word spelled on the sign. The pages are visually striking, offering both similarities and sharp contrasts between different signs. This is testimony to Campe’s work […]

29 Aug 2012

Walls by Deidi von Schaewen

Deidi von Schaewen’s ‘Walls’ is a lovely hardback book that documents hand painted advertising on walls in the 1960s and 1970s.  It’s geographical coverage is noteworthy with examples from Berlin, London, New York, Paris and elsewhere in France.  Most of the photography is in black and white with a handful of colour images, all of […]

11 Apr 2012

Article charting the history and early photography of advertising painted on walls

Daniel Lohmann posted an article he’s written to the ghostsigns Facebook group. It is in german and the original can be found here [Link expired] with links to full size copies of the diverse set of images referenced. The pdf of the original as it appeared in published form is also available here. I’ve run the […]

26 Feb 2012

Ghost Signs Received (Europe)

Having been fairly busy over the last few months at work and on my course I’ve only been making the occasional posts of things that people have sent to me. What has resulted is a slight backlog of pictures and so these posts will pull these together along geographic lines (London, UK, Europe and USA). […]

11 Mar 2008