Letters on Walls
Welcome to Letters on Walls
Archiving signs from mid-century apartment buildings. Celebrating the beauty of imperfect letterforms and badly kerned words.
Apartment buildings built in the 1950s and 60s were often designed with simple and basic plans. It was important to build quickly and affordably to accomodate growing city centers, replacing single family homes. In Southern California and other sunbelt states, Dingbat Apartments led the way with boxy two- or three-story buildings. As a way of distinguishing the otherwise cookie-cutter designs, the street facing fascade was designed with texture, varied materials, ornaments and unique names.
The names and the signs
The names of the apartments were influenced by the names of streets, neighborhoods and districts, exotic locations, tiki culture, and some were even named after family members of developers. The signs were produced in pressed wood or cut metal, and were mostly hand-drawn, resulting in imperfect letterforms that were installed with little attention to kerning and word spacing.
The Dingbat design evolved and the sign treatments transferred to other styles of apartment architecture.
Today, these signs are deteriorating, and many have been replaced with digitally produced sign panels or generic stock letters. The original beautiful, imperfect letters on walls are disappearing.
THE ARCHIVE
As a career art director and graphic designer, I decided to begin archiving these apartment signs as a way of preserving their history. Hand-drawn typography can be appreciated for the craft involved, and continue to inspire contemporary typographers. I am not an architect or a sign maker, but do appreciate all design practices.
The archive lives on my Instagram site, Letters on Walls. Follow me!
Please help me build this archive by posting on Instagram and tagging #lettersonwallsinstagram. I’ll add your photos to the feed. Try to include an address so that others can enjoy these treasures in person.
I hope you enjoy this archive. I welcome your comments on Instagram or you can contact me at mail@sanluisdesign.com
—Roberto San Luis
Letters on Walls archive lives on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/lettersonwalls/
Thank you to Instagram for hosting the archive. Special thanks to the GPS Coordinates app for helping me provide location details for each listing. The details are the final photo of each collection. The coordinates sometimes do not match the address exactly, but it will get you to the sign.
Letters on Walls 