Balearic graphic design

[imomus]

We've all heard of Balearic Beat, the jubilant, incessant 4/4 thump that makes people living in Valencia yell at people in Ibiza: "Keep that bloody racket down!" But what about Balearic graphics? Just back from a weekend in Vilanova i la Geltrú, I'd like to present a portrait of the town through its graphic design. Inevitably, we'll come back to Saturday's topic, Microsoft's Comic Sans, which has ravaged and reduced this town's once-rich graphic heritage. But let's start with happier sights.



These chemist's shop and hairdresser signs date, I'd say, from the 1940s, though I may be wrong. I really adore the letterforms here, Modernist but still quirky.




The tiled street signs are magnificent. I'd date these to the 1890s; they're clearly influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec theatre posters, the Paris metro, and Art Nouveau.



Train and restaurant graphics from the 1920s and 30s. High Modernism is all mixed up, in Italy and Spain, with Mussolini and Franco. It must be difficult for Spanish to admire Modernist graphics without thinking of these dictators.



Then again, I can't look at Comic Sans -- woefully popular these days in Vilanova -- without thinking of contemporary "dictators" and their "evil empires".



Even worse than Comic Sans on a Spanish cafe blind is Comic Sans condensed on a van or a supermercat Staff Wanted sign.



Microsoft paranoia began to set in at this point: could the writers of political graffiti also be using Comic Sans?



Here's a fascinating example of uniformity in the service of diversity: the same paper, with the same Helvetica graphics and the same stories, but two different language editions, a Spanish and a Catalan one, distinguished only by the red and blue tops. The lead story is about linguistic diversity, but the paper's title is wonderfully generic: The Periodical.



No Parking graphics from "the age of the car".



Some nicely-fatigued signs at the train museum, demonstrating that even where mechanical type systems strip a town of quirk and diversity, the weather can bring it back.



Our hotel had a splendidly non-harmonised series of monograms on towels and sheets.



Some nautical references in a fish shop and a block of flats on the seafront.



Finally, postmodernism gives us some big, bland drive-in graphics and a half-hearted attempt to revive the kind of hand-lettering -- and therefore the kind of personal, local, quirky charm -- its reductive uniformities of global logistics and standardization threaten.

But let's not forget that when it's fatigued, discontinued, safely historical, all this -- and even Comic Sans -- will take its place in the rich tapestry of graphic design's endless diversity. The rehabilitation of Comic Sans, as we saw the other day, has already begun. The dictator becomes, in the end, just another citizen, the crushing weight just another geological layer.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I doubt those street tiles date back to the 1890s. They look to me like a much later signalling of the "home of Gaudi" etc. They're tourist props, in other words.

[palux-negro.livejournal.com]

Everytime someone uses Comic Sans god kills a kitten. That makes lot of vilanova i la geltrú dead kittens.

[siluetanegra.livejournal.com]

this post was cool! but, i don't think we (spanish people) would associate modernist stuff to franco's dictature, i would rather say it's from the republican years or the war... as this one from valencia. I guess i couldn't associate dictature with good design,weird i know, but franco's image was a bit retrograde, wasn't the case of mussolini and italian fascist who had good architects and artists following them (as terragni...).
But this is all probably just a subjective approach!
and of course...i'm tempted to talk about language diversity in Valencia and Catalonia but that would be out of context and I will continue just arguing with my friends and family about that painful subject!haha!it's better than football or religion if you want to start a riot here!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You may well be right, which makes them a nice example of how postmodernism actually boosts the local as well as the global. Just as it's probably we tourists who get the Vilanovans eating their own fish again (we didn't come to this town to eat Burger King fries), so it's postmodern logistics which demand a "localisation" of the street signage. A style is chosen. It happens to be French in origin, but it'll do. It looks local. Well, more local than Gill Sans, anyway.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hey, maybe you can tell me, is this Modernist relief of a haunted moustached man a bust of Franco? It's on the seafront at Vilanova, and it looks a lot like him!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, no, wait, it's Francesc Macia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesc_Macia), who attempted to establish a Free Catelan Republic!

Actually, Vilanovans hated Franco, who banned the Catellan language and even renamed their town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilanova_i_la_Geltrú) Villanueva y Geltrú. They also resisted his ban on carnivals.

I guess this bears out your point: Modernism is as readily identified in Spain with the anti-fascists as with the fascists. Phew!

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

lol, aparcar. I had a highschool Spanish teacher who admonished her (already largely bilingual) students not to use the Tex-Mex anglicism parquear in favor of the more latinate estacionar. Interesting to see that park has entered the language elsewhere in another form.

[(Anonymous)]

I just wanted to say thanks for this post, it's awesome.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

the tiled street signs are definitely not from the 1890s! I've seen them in other coastal places too.

here are some more 'Iberian typefaces'.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/7994577@N07/2645291373/)

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/7994577@N07/2646106922/)

All the residential blocks in my street and the surrounding area were built in about 1971. Most have names in a very '70s font along their façades.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/7994577@N07/2646127628/)
No idea what it might be called. These are definitely original, as I have a piece of old film negative, dated july 1972, which I found whilst skip diving in a nearby street. This shows the landscaping of the area being finished off, and it is possible to see that the buildings had those names already.

It is amazing how much has gone unchanged since then - there is a nearby indoor market hall which still has pretty much all the original business' names above the stalls, though many of the sellers are now long gone.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/7994577@N07/2645276441/)
Not being a wealthy area, I suppose there just wasn't the perceived 'need' for the local small outlets to modernise their shopfronts year by year as they wouldn't have had much to gain from it.

The more recently-opened chinese general stores and PC repairers co exist amongst the older shops and buildings dating from the 70s TV repair shop, bakery, egg-shop, sausage-shop, margerine-shop, tap-shop... (yes seriously!)

[olliecrafoord.livejournal.com]

Fact.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

just like postmodernism ,( post-industrialism etc ) the term modernism itself is explaining nothing - take not spain but italy . similar story . futurism = modernism --> fascism =? modernism --//-> neorealist cinema = modernism ....... ..... what's the common denominator? none other than a time frame. vectors moving in opposite directions , left/right republic/empire etc get lumped together.

i don't know why the retro-local signs should be seen as post-modern. i think they might be equally close to what was going on in most of (not only) europe cca 1848.

Latest Frieze

[viceanglais.livejournal.com]

Re: Latest Frieze

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, you know that's really not impossible, in an uber-superior hipper-than-thou way, but we may have to wait for the 90s revival really to kick in before we see it on the stands.

rock me momadeus

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Of all your cityscape posts, I liked this one the best. I am attracted to Spain and to coastal towns. I also am attracted to the way the old men dress, like you noted in your most recent slideshow.

Other than a few months in Athens when I was a child, Barcelona and Rome are the only parts of Europe I have ever spent any time in, and while Rome was beautiful in every direction (the colors!) Barcelona was a town where I felt very at home. Of course it helped that I met a girl who was the tour guide of Gaudi's La Pedrera apartment building. Spanish girls are very pretty :-)

[(Anonymous)]

You can't spell and you need a geography lesson. It is 'Catalan', and Vilanova i la Geltrú is in Catalunya, not the Balearic Islands, so what is 'Balearic Graphic Design' all about?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I did indeed spell Catalan wrong, but as the inventor of "Balearic Graphics" I can tell you (should you wish to start a Wikipedia page about it) that the term refers to the area on both sides of the Balearic Sea (yes, it's a sea, not just some islands) -- roughly the same area in which Catalan is spoken. You can use this graphic of a street sign in Vilanova i la Geltrú if you like.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

Tell us all about Balearic graphic design in Corsica and the French Riviera then, Momus!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

All in good time, Anon!

[(Anonymous)]

The term does not refer to areas on both sides of the Balearic Sea, the term refers to the Islands that are situated in the Balearic Sea. Just because there is a street in Vilanova i la Geltrú called 'Carrer de Balears' does not mean anything. By that logic London should form part of Denmark due to the presence of 'Denmark Street' in the UK Capital.

[(Anonymous)]

Very interesting.
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