Sign Painting vs Wood Type
サインペインティング / 木活字ディスプレイ
Sign Painting comes from Lettering and Wood Type from Type Classification. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Sign Painting
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A trade that paints commercial lettering with brush and paint straight onto buildings and windows, giving the street a lettering that carries the trace of a hand.
Wood Type
Gigantic letters cut from wood for broadside posters created the display vocabulary of extreme condensation, extension and ornament.
| Sign Painting | Wood Type | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 19th century– | 1827– |
| Family | Lettering | Type Classification |
| Kind | Technique | Technique |
| Cues | Strokes that keep the brush / Shades and outlines / One-shot strokes / Improvised to the site | Gigantic sizes / Extreme condensing and extending / Carved ornament / Ink scuff and material grain |
| Best used for | Painting a shop name straight onto glass or fascia at opening · Giving a neighborhood bar or cafe a warmth mass-produced logos cannot reach | Large announcements and banners that must maximize words within a fixed sheet · Signs and menus for eating places borrowing the air of markets and shows |
| Type | Casual script paired with fat roman, stretched by hand to fit | Change face and width by line, choosing widths to fit each word |
| Composition | Measure the panel first, then set address and phone smaller below | Justify every line to the full sheet and divide bands with rules |
| Material | One-shot enamel laid in a single pass, shaded and outlined | Firm impression showing grain, few colors, chips and wear left in |
| Caution | Adding wobble afterwards as an effect kills the tension of the single pass, and the sign reads as a stretched handwriting font. | Multiplying faces line by line without ranking them flattens the order of emphasis, and no one can tell what to read first. |