This week Halifax Examiner linked to a story about a branding proposal that the town of Yarmouth is working on. Their consultants recently presented a word mark concept and a recommendation for a tagline: on the edge of everywhere. I'm fond of Yarmouth and was pleased to hear they are thinking about their identity. Commenters on the Examiner…Read More

Folks who follow this blog will notice that almost any sign or example of public typography will attract my attention. It can be a message in chalk on the sidewalk or a memorial cast in bronze, someone tried to communicate with us so let's pause and appreciate their effort. In this post I've put together…Read More

I've done several posts recently that encouraged you to notice and acknowledge surfaces we often ignore (carpets in airports and streets in historic photos of Halifax). In that vein this post is an opportunity to show some old street and sidewalk surfaces that I have witnessed but that have mostly disappeared. In the nineteenth century, the best sidewalks…Read More

The Portland Oregon Airport is changing its carpets. I suspect you're  thinking this doesn't seem like much of a story but it turns out that the people of Portland actually like their airport carpet (which was installed about 25 years ago). You can pursue the story  here. And you also might not be surprised that I've…Read More

In several Halifax Examiner posts ( December 5 and January 9) Tim Bousquet has commented on a favourite episode of the 99% Invisible podcast. It tells how the automobile industry created the myth of the reckless pedestrian and branded streets as places where people don’t belong. Tim writes: “For almost the entire history of streets — 8,000 years…Read More

A lot of you are fans of the podcast 99% Invisible, “a tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.” It is breezy and fascinating and the host Roman Mars is a treasure. If I had a podcast I’d want to sound exactly like Roman. The programs appeal…Read More

This is a happy story except for the very bad thing that happens in the beginning. The rest is such good news it somehow makes the bad thing feel like... magic? fantasy? It is also an old story from the mid 1990s. It was a cold winter morning. We had an old, used Volvo station…Read More

Many of you will not be aware of St Paul's Parish Hall that once was a strong presence on Argyle Street. Bits of the building survive, buried in the facade of the office building immediately south of the Auction House bar. (This is a screenshot from Street View.) When you see what the Hall looked like…Read More

This New Year idea got me thinking about things that are gone (as gone as 2014). So I looked for some photos I'd taken of houses that were gone as in demolished. My photos tend to be south of Spring Garden because that is the area where I lived in the 70s and 80s, and where buildings…Read More

Everywhere people are doing end of year commentaries and "best of" lists. This has encouraged me to look back over my little collection of noticings to see if I could convert some into a year-end listicle. It turns out I don't have any great insights, so basically I've combined some favourite images and added some numbers. 1)  My, there is…Read More