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?)