The city of Amsterdam is filled with fascinating examples of typography, displayed on every other corner of its streets. Together with Studio BAR, the graphic design studio I work with, we researched, designed and printed a guide featuring our favourite examples of street typography. We created an entire alphabet, shining the spotlight on the digits and letters we like most. The project resulted in both an in-house exhibition, as well as an outdoor one: a map to guide you past the life-life ones in Amsterdam’s city streets. The ABC directs you to the delicately considered, grossly over-thought or casually placed typographic endeavours that make the city typographically special.
My role in this project stretched from finding many of the gems, researching those that made the cut and eventually photographing our precious finds for the expo. Finding these works is a switch you flick in your head – once you start looking up and around a new world opens up to you. I loved it – and now I can’t stop spotting more and more. By researching those numbers, letters or addresses we’d selected I disappeared down a rabbit hole of mini-histories of Amsterdam. Each address has its own story to tell.
For a building on Prinsengracht 400 I found a 13-minute long entire YouTube video detailing the history of that spot (it’s where you’ll now find our ‘R’). Another entertaining story attached the building featuring our ‘Y’, as part of the word Olympia. Though since converted, the former cinema was known for a time as the ‘plomp’, after the name of the sound made by peeled buckets thrown into a pot filled with water. Women supposedly frequented the cinema to watch the news and would get their peeling done at the same time. I also read a source that claimed the screen had to be kept wet due to the heat of the projector lights. Another letter on our guide – the ‘Q’ – turned out to be a historical reference to the Roman SPQR by Amsterdamse School architects. Somewhat arrogantly referencing Amsterdam as an equal to the Roman empire gives you insight into how positive their views of the future were. I could go on, but there are plenty of spots which are an entry into this world of Amsterdam facade stories – just walk down the street and have that world open up to you.
I loved getting into this and so will you. You can start by buying our guide here.
Brain & Guts 