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. Both are read here as technique. 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
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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. |