The making of the Sign in Moscow, Russia

Chief typesetter: I’ve got a 15-minute task: the type setting needs some work.

Clearing up details of the task, sketching up alternatives.

Artemius typeset:

Direct typeset:

Chief typesetter: Let’s play with the kerning of Artemius. Maybe try a star shape?

Drawing intermediate versions and sending them to the art director.

Art director: Let’s go with the classic shape and make the color a brighter red.

Changing the color to brighter red. The night of unrestrained kerning adjustment begins.

Before:

After:

As different as night and day.

Project manager: Remove the word "это" (“This is,” leaving only “The Sign in Moscow Everyone Takes Pictures With”).

The art director suddenly appears and asks to add rounding-offs around mounting holes.

Art director: Both are ugly. Don’t be afreaid to make a proper white-colored rounding-off.

These were the longest 15 minutes in the typesetter’s life.

* * *

Two weeks later the Sign arrives from Holland. It stays at the studio for a while, pleasing the eyes of every studio employee and boosting the typesetter’s self-esteem. Until one day the beautiful glossy handmade Sign, the Sign created using a unique method of successive baking of several layers of multi-colored enamel—is hopelessly ruined. There were no witnesses of the crime. The opening of the Sign is delayed. The Dutch masters receive another order.

Humiliated and devastated, the broken Sign finds its peace by the typesetter’s desk where it lives its last days in a pile of its own enamel.

The grand opening.