Lit in Neon, Cut into Stone: A Typographic Tour of Berlin

In a recent photo essay, the blogger at Berlin Typography asks: “Is there anything that defines a city more comprehensively — and more subtly — than the simple street sign?” This typography enthusiast takes us on a visual tour of the city, studying and appreciating the fonts on signs, facades, bridges, and other text embedded in the urban landscape. See Berlin from a different angle on this stylish, well-curated new site.

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Relief lettering on one of Berlin’s many stone surfaces. From “Stone Letters in Berlin, Part One.”

Our wealth of illuminated signs may be more immediately apparent to the casual flâneur, but anyone who really wants to experience the astonishing breadth of typographic invention on display in Berlin must also look out for what is written in stone.

Blackletter made from negative space. From “Berlin’s Bridge Typography.”

Most of those bridges have a name and, more importantly for us, that name almost always appears in physical form somewhere on the structure itself, making the bridges of Berlin a natural treasure trove not only for different typefaces but for different materials in which words can be rendered.

A comb-shaped sign (with umlaut) from “The Typography of Hair Salons.”

From the earliest barber-surgeons to the artisans of the present day, hairdressers have been a part of the city’s history since the very beginning . . . and wherever there are people in the business of cutting and styling hair, interesting typography is never far behind.

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Continue this visual tour at Berlin Typography. Love this site’s look? Try the Tonal theme: a free, minimal design that puts your photographs front and center.