Tabacaria Turista
When first installed, the letters on this shopfront on the Avenida da Liberdade in Lisbon were nothing to write home about. The font choice is rather trite: Balloon Drop Shadow is used for the name of the shop. The products and services offered – tobacco, handicrafts, photocopies – are shown in a sans-serif typeface. Based on the placement of the acute accent, my best guess would be Arial Black. The interesting part is what happened over time: The edges of the letters curled up (which may partly explain the weight difference between Arial Black and the letters seen here) and most letters have cracks running right through them. In some letters (e.g., ‘A’), the cracks are similar on each instance, whereas others (e.g., ‘O’) always crack differently. The result of this truly custom pattern of cracks is signage that may be more decorative than the designer originally intended.
2 Comments on “Tabacaria Turista”
For a second for a distance I though this was a showing of Minotaur Beef!
It’s marvellous what the sun can do to vinyl letters. Here’s a great specimen of “natural inktraps”, found by Yvonne: