Schuhexpress, Gera
Tightly spaced caps from Cooper Black, the typeface “for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers”, mounted on the façade of what used to be the “Shoe Express” in Gera, Thuringia, and probably dating from the GDR days.
More recently, the building housed Schuhservice „Thomas Müntzer“, a company focusing on orthopedic shoe technology. Their shop window lettering is worth a look, too. The name of the company’s patron, a prominent figure of the German Reformation, is fittingly set in Alte Schwabacher. This typeface, like most blackletter designs, comes with two forms for s; the round one and the long one (ſ). This application shows neither. Chances are the specific font in use offered an ſ as the default glyph. The sign maker didn’t like that, or was aware that this form isn’t meant to be used in final position. Since they couldn’t locate the alternate round form – in pre-OpenType fonts like URW’s, it’s hidden under the number sign (#) code point – they went with a a scaled-down capital form (S).
Spotted by Monsier Adrien in August 2022.
Detail
Detail
