That's how my eyes read it the first time I saw it, Vanda. I think I'd make it simply "Cards and Crap" as that pretty much sums up the gift section of the shop.
It's a personal rule, but I never shop for a gift in a gift shop. The little tschotskes are crap. Instead of reading "Happy Birthday Mum!" they should say "I didn't have time to give you any more consideration than to shop for this fluffy piece of shit at the franchise card store!"
As for "&" I think it may be easier to read as "Cards & wrap" than "Cardsandwrap." Shouldn't the "w" also have been upper case?
Speedway, when it comes to logic, common sense, æsthetics, correct grammar, kerning or even spelling, the people who develop corporate text standards are somewhere down below the tapeworm in their capability for reason. Take my own company’s standards for example. In our logo the ampersand has been omitted in favour of the plus sign, which has to be a particular shade of Pantone orange (for no sane reason). The font itself is listed nowhere in the universe outside of our servers and is rumoured to have been developed by a member of our Prague office after a drinking session. We also spell our company name an illogical way and so have to pay extra for an email service to pick up all the logically spelled versions that would otherwise never get through.
As for gift shops: I love them more than life itself. I’d never buy a gift from them but I have a fatal weakness for tacky kitsch and tend to impulse buy it by the ton. Together with my pink mosque alarm clock (yes, it calls me to prayer in the mornings) I treasure a cringe-inducing china angel Katie found for me in a San Francisco dollar store.
The exception that proves the rule on corporate fonts is of course Jonathan Paterson's incomparable 1915 London Underground font. I gasp at its utter perfection.
And your company paid a billion-gazillion wahzoos for that specific shade of orange, too, that says "let us design your building because we're the best of all the other billion-gazillion yayhoos who use a different shade of orange."
You know the changing of the sign could be made easier, I think, if you just buy some adhesive letters, peel up the offending & or w, then just stick on the replacement.
Actually, we're designers so we did it ourselves for nothing more than a few Czech beers and I have to confess it's pretty whizzy. The downside is that nobody has the font on their home machines or our clients' machines so we have to package everything up with a self-opening file filled with images which makes emailing stuff a real pain in the butt.
The changing of the cards and crap sign would be tricky as it's right by a staff counter.
Petrea, one of the things that gets my OCD boiling is when - completely unintentionally - a page seems to have a pattern in it. It's usually an unfortunate run of similar punctuation or tall letters running down the page at an angle but it keeps distracting me while I read. Am I mad or does this affect other people, too?
Hee hee, Ms.M. Sounds like a misspelled fish dish.
As for anagrams, this post from my very first month of blogging will reveal my obsession with them: http://smallglassplanet.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/truth-about-everything.html
Hey, I just learned more about the ampersand. It used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet. When children recited their ABCs, it was too awkward to say "X, Y, Z, and" so they said "X, Y, Z, and per se," which became mispronounced over time into "ampersand." Also learned that the Roman scribes combined the letters for "et" which made the & shape when seen together.
Yay, ligatures and the ampersand! You know what a fan I am of ligatures, Speedway … and how mercilessly I mock Webster's imbecile lack of them. My usual opening example being the crime of pedophilia in the US: prosecuting people who like feet. Pædophilia and pedophilia are two completely different words and if you're a child it's vitally important to know the difference. Oh, and don't get me started on people mispronouncing æsthetics.
Ligatures appear in Germanic languages as well as Latin ones and they all serve a purpose (not just as a shorthand version like the ampersand). By denying your nation the use of them he is guilty of a crime against reason (see way too many posts railing against Websterism - with lots of swearing). Hee hee.
15 comments:
Wards and Crap?
That's how my eyes read it the first time I saw it, Vanda.
I think I'd make it simply "Cards and Crap" as that pretty much sums up the gift section of the shop.
It's a personal rule, but I never shop for a gift in a gift shop. The little tschotskes are crap. Instead of reading "Happy Birthday Mum!" they should say "I didn't have time to give you any more consideration than to shop for this fluffy piece of shit at the franchise card store!"
As for "&" I think it may be easier to read as "Cards & wrap" than "Cardsandwrap." Shouldn't the "w" also have been upper case?
Speedway, when it comes to logic, common sense, æsthetics, correct grammar, kerning or even spelling, the people who develop corporate text standards are somewhere down below the tapeworm in their capability for reason.
Take my own company’s standards for example. In our logo the ampersand has been omitted in favour of the plus sign, which has to be a particular shade of Pantone orange (for no sane reason). The font itself is listed nowhere in the universe outside of our servers and is rumoured to have been developed by a member of our Prague office after a drinking session. We also spell our company name an illogical way and so have to pay extra for an email service to pick up all the logically spelled versions that would otherwise never get through.
As for gift shops: I love them more than life itself. I’d never buy a gift from them but I have a fatal weakness for tacky kitsch and tend to impulse buy it by the ton. Together with my pink mosque alarm clock (yes, it calls me to prayer in the mornings) I treasure a cringe-inducing china angel Katie found for me in a San Francisco dollar store.
The exception that proves the rule on corporate fonts is of course Jonathan Paterson's incomparable 1915 London Underground font.
I gasp at its utter perfection.
And your company paid a billion-gazillion wahzoos for that specific shade of orange, too, that says "let us design your building because we're the best of all the other billion-gazillion yayhoos who use a different shade of orange."
You know the changing of the sign could be made easier, I think, if you just buy some adhesive letters, peel up the offending & or w, then just stick on the replacement.
Actually, we're designers so we did it ourselves for nothing more than a few Czech beers and I have to confess it's pretty whizzy. The downside is that nobody has the font on their home machines or our clients' machines so we have to package everything up with a self-opening file filled with images which makes emailing stuff a real pain in the butt.
The changing of the cards and crap sign would be tricky as it's right by a staff counter.
I never thought of these things much before, but now that I've got a book to put together I obsess about kerning and fonts and whatnot.
How about anagrams?
Scrad & Praw
Could be the name of a pub during the 1600s - The Scrad & Praw.
Petrea, one of the things that gets my OCD boiling is when - completely unintentionally - a page seems to have a pattern in it. It's usually an unfortunate run of similar punctuation or tall letters running down the page at an angle but it keeps distracting me while I read.
Am I mad or does this affect other people, too?
Hee hee, Ms.M. Sounds like a misspelled fish dish.
As for anagrams, this post from my very first month of blogging will reveal my obsession with them:
http://smallglassplanet.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/truth-about-everything.html
I see those patterns sometimes, but I'm able to ignore them. Perhaps that's the difference between OCD and not OCD.
I think I'm merely an über-pedant, Petrea.
Hey, I just learned more about the ampersand. It used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet. When children recited their ABCs, it was too awkward to say "X, Y, Z, and" so they said "X, Y, Z, and per se," which became mispronounced over time into "ampersand." Also learned that the Roman scribes combined the letters for "et" which made the & shape when seen together.
See info here:
http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/theampersand.html
Yay, ligatures and the ampersand!
You know what a fan I am of ligatures, Speedway … and how mercilessly I mock Webster's imbecile lack of them. My usual opening example being the crime of pedophilia in the US: prosecuting people who like feet. Pædophilia and pedophilia are two completely different words and if you're a child it's vitally important to know the difference.
Oh, and don't get me started on people mispronouncing æsthetics.
Ligatures appear in Germanic languages as well as Latin ones and they all serve a purpose (not just as a shorthand version like the ampersand). By denying your nation the use of them he is guilty of a crime against reason (see way too many posts railing against Websterism - with lots of swearing). Hee hee.
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