ISO 26 SIGNS
Holly Ritland
“ISO 26 SIGNS” began with a childhood memory of the road trip game Alphabet where everyone looks out the car windows and calls out letters from A to Z in sequence as they are spotted on signs whizzing by. Later, the iconic “ransom note” that is spelled with letters cut from magazine pages came to mind. My idea took off when I reimagined the game and the ransom note, grabbed my camera, and set off to wander through eight towns in search of signs.
Six weeks and 250 signs later, I had gleaned letters in typefaces from wacky to practical to inspired until I had multiple versions of all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. I defined a "letterform unit" as a photo that included a single alphabet letter plus surrounding clues as to the letter’s original setting. Then I selected and assembled a set of units into a quirky typeface I named Meta. (The word “meta” is used when a creative work refers back to itself. In this case, my new typeface refers back to and uses the many typefaces I gathered from signs.)
I am displaying my Meta typeface here in a pangram sentence in which every letter of the alphabet is used at least once: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG! During the creation of each word collage, I first focused on readability and kept in mind typographic considerations like the size, alignment, and spacing of the letterform units. Then I looked at the images, shapes, and colors surrounding each letter and intentionally placed units to juxtapose the flow of reading left to right with playful distractions (like ice cream cones and reflections) that add fun to the sentence.
“ISO 26 SIGNS” is all about my quest to photograph signs, an odd desire to deconstruct these signs, and the creation of the eclectic typeface Meta.
My search took me to towns in four states. In Virginia, I walked through the old town sections of Middleburg and Leesburg, the Del Ray neighborhood in Alexandria, Charlottesville and the University of Virginia campus, and suburban shopping areas in Fairfax. I also visited Monterey, California; Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; and Shepherdstown, West Virginia.