Signs of a city.
Eye revisits the typography of Athenian street signs

Published on Monday, 1 March, 2010 | 1:58 pm

When Minos Zarifopoulos wrote about Athenian street signs in Eye 45, he worried that a project to remove modern billboards and other ‘visual disturbances’ could give the impression of ‘walking around an open-air museum of how Athens used to be’, writes John Ridpath. Eight years on, it’s still up for debate whether tidying up the main squares and thoroughfares has rejuvenated the city or glossed over its recent history. But in the back-streets of central Athens a rich history of shop sign typography is still everywhere to see, and still evolving.

Eye revisited Athens for this year’s Design Walk (see ‘Athenian walkways’). While we were out there, we took some new photos of the signs (see below, more images on Flickr).

Corner shop

Panto

Histor

Neon pink

‘The visual language used manifests the passage from tradition to modern life – from the art of the signwriter to digitally produced letters on aluminum light boxes. Early forms of signs showed the title of the service and name of the owner. These were followed by a westernised type of sign vocabulary with trendy foreign words written in Greek characters and the “all singing, all dancing” animated neon signs together with more recent, ethnically targeted signs set in Russian, Indian or Chinese.’ (Minos Zarifopoulos, ‘Urban renewal’, Eye 45)

Greek curves

Handpainted

Idioteque

Brothel

Photographs by John Ridpath and Kirsty Allison.

Below: Spreads from ‘Urban renewal’, Eye 45.

Eye, the international review of graphic design, is a quarterly journal you can read like a magazine and collect like a book. It’s available from all good design bookshops and at the online Eye shop, where you can order subscriptions, single issues and classic collections of themed back issues.

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  1. March 1st, 2010 at 2:25 pm | by uberVU - social comments

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by eyemagazine: Signs of a city, http://bit.ly/csrB9P, Eye revisits the typography of Athenian street signs…

  2. March 3rd, 2010 at 11:48 am | by Backseat Valet | BIKE ROOF RACK .net Bicycle Carriers & Accessories

    [...] Eye blog » Signs of a city. Eye revisits the typography of … [...]

  3. March 18th, 2010 at 6:55 pm | by Eye blog » Athens snapshots: Indyvisuals.‘Athens is old and new, busy and noisy, politically and economically imbalanced’

    [...] as Greek graphic design can be found in the signs of old buildings all across old Athens (see ‘Signs of a city’ on the Eye blog). We can’t really say if it is good or bad, or 100 per cent Greek (it was [...]

  4. April 15th, 2010 at 3:41 pm | by Eye blog » Athens snapshots: MNP.‘Greek design is everywhere … even in multi-photocopied civil service forms’

    [...] Greek book was printed. Today all you have to do is look around you and its presence is there: from old signs to numerous artistic editions, fanzines, posters for gigs, objects found in second hand shops, and [...]

  5. July 6th, 2010 at 12:41 pm | by Eye blog » Graphic love for ‘Labels’. International winners announced in ‘Ten Images for Ithaca’ 2010

    [...] For more on Greek design see our ‘Athens snapshots’ and ‘Signs of a city’. [...]

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