The Many Fonts of the West

Inspiration from the Road: Part 1

Vancouver > Kamloops > Jasper > Revelstoke > Vancouver > Seattle > Portland > Astoria > Vancouver

The moment summer break commenced, my husband, his parents, and I road-tripped across western Canada and down the coast to Oregon by way of Seattle and Portland. A nervous passenger with an ADHD brain allergic to boredom, I had to set myself some kind of creative challenge to focus my energies.

A Creative Challenge: Typeface

Inspired by the photo below, which documents the moment I defensively told my husband I was not loyal to a baseball team (Yes I proudly and interchangeably wear both Mets and Yankees caps, so don’t @ me), but a fan of creative typefaces, and having just read Ali LaBelle’s newsletter about vacation photo inspiration, I snapped as many pics as I could of the creative lettering that peppered both the highway roadside stops and downtown city sidewalks we visited.

From the hand-lettered to the digitally designed, from neon to Sharpie, each of the images below inspired me to snap a quick phone pic (much to the kind chagrin of my big-camera-purist and landscape photographer father-in-law).

It’s remarkable to me that so many little works of art are hiding in plain sight with their serifs and their swirls, telling us little stories and telling us about the rummage sale around the corner.

License plates, skis, beer and cocktail branding, old school hotel signage, street art, public markets, and surprisingly laundromats served lettering inspo. Do you recognize any of these images?

I challenge you to notice the typeface hiding in your own next adventures (and share with me, I’d love to see!)