Vernacular signage roundup

four from the (my) archive. 

A few gems may be found at The Journal of Urban Typography

The makings of a beautiful book in the Walker Evans/William Christenberry/Stephen Shore tradition, on Flickr.
Vernacular Typography Polaroids by onpaperwings

Molly Woodward has a way with multiples and cropping.
Her images are gathered at the wonderful and thorough Vernacular Typography

Vernacular signs—local, site-specific, handmade or hand-crafted messages produced as a unique piece of art or a small run artifact, sometimes ethnically inflected, often naive. Many people, like me, are drawn to lettering and type in the abstract and all the more so when these are encountered in the environment. There's just so much fodder for the camera: hand lettered on board, hand painted on brick, carved into stonework, cast into metal, cut from plastic or shaped in neon. Some of the many reasons to take note of signs and lettering likely just outside your window: 

because they're painfully beautiful,

or laughably ugly,

or worn and almost forgotten, 

or goofily idiosyncratic,

or stunningly banal,

or regal and antique,

 or they're unintelligible—

because of how they look, yes, but also because of what they say, 

how they say it, and even where they say it.