Recently, while squint­ing at the type embroi­dered on my mat­tress (don’t ask), I noticed that the dot on Posturepedic’s “i” does double-duty, serv­ing first as a char­ac­ter ele­ment and sec­ond (albeit only to those who squint at mat­tresses) as a trade­mark sig­ni­fier. My next thought was not “What the hell am I doing on the floor star­ing at my mat­tress?” as you might expect, but rather, “Why don’t I see this kind of thing more often?”

The omnipresent circle-R rarely feels like it belongs, typ­i­cally cling­ing to one cor­ner of an otherwise-balanced logo­type. So why isn’t it more com­mon to incor­po­rate the sym­bol directly into a logo? Then only the lawyers and design­ers among us would notice the “®,” brand­ing would be bol­stered with a min­i­mum of detract­ing visual ele­ments, and the masses would go on liv­ing their lives, not miss­ing a thing.

Okay, so I hate Comic Sans as much as the next guy, but this is pretty clever: So a real bank, with bank-quality type, closes up shop. Then, the space is acquired by a 99-cent store with a sense of humor. The owner calls it the “Bargain Bank,” and the ugly, yet appro­pri­ately low-budget let­ter­ing is set above the orig­i­nal mar­ble facade, com­mu­ni­cat­ing the entire story with grace­ful clar­ity. It’s per­fect and I love it; I just don’t want to look at it.