Time to celebrate summer with a post about letters in sand.

Those millenia-old little granules provide a lot of lettering options. Wet, they stick together better, but dark sand is fairly low-contrast. Dry, they want to lay flat, and so are hard to shape into forms, but with deep enough troughs (or a sun low enough in the sky), you can get some nice definition, such as with the rough serifs above.

But really, the best parts are that (A) you’re on the beach, and (B) nature’s own Etch-a-Sketch is easy enough to reset whenever you want to start afresh.

It’s old, it’s stone, and it’s a bank. Yet its name has been taken hostage by quotation marks.

Breaking out of the grid is a fun way to make information stand out, as long legibility is maintained. Here, the top of the “7” is aligned with the x-height of the last line of text, and the rest of the number just hangs down below that. Of course, it’s also in red, which helps the numeral stand out, and may also tell riders that this sign is different than all the other MTA instructional placards. (After all, which is more important: to not lean against the door, or to not assault subway personnel?)