Signage, bad or not bad

MAST BOOKS

This week, the legendary figure in American avant-garde cinema, Jonas Mekas, published his new edition book I Had Nowhere To Go and hold his new book signing session in MAST BOOKS, a book store in East Village. I went there to bought the book and meet him, then I found the signage is so minimalist and aesthetic. There are two element on this signage, the name of the store and the address. Written in white color on the black background. The name of this book store is short, they are designed in all capitals and bold face, simple but very effective, very easy to remember. And the signage design is very strongly matches the doorframe, the decoration inside, and the nature of the independent book store. It shows the simplicity and continuity.

Here are some prototypes of the book store‘s peripheral product, using the same typeface with the signage design.

Sobaya

A Japanese restaurant in East Village. Hand writing typeface, and beige for words, brown for background.

BAD ONE!

DELI GROCERY

Chaos and looking horrible. Written Spanish food on the signage, but use the fruit as the background picture.

GOOD TASTE RESTAURANT

Redesign

At the begining, I would like to use the ancient Chinese typeface to design the signage, through a very simplictic way. Then consider the customer of this restraunt and the decoration of this restaurant, if the signage is to delicate, the potential customer will think this restaurant might be expensive.

Then I was inspired by the Hong Kong street restaurant, so I decide to design the signage through the Hong Kong style to match the property and the style of this kind of restaurant to attract the potential customers.