Can you pop that on the bog door mate.

Sorry but this fails in the second aspect. It is bold and has a presence: not an altogether pleasant one though. It is overly harsh and extremely retro.

The drop shadow, super high contrasting colours and all caps, is very hard legibility wise and while reminiscent of Victorian fire engine graphics etc., it also resembles old style pub typography.

At the risk of starting a heated debate (but hopefully a cool, rational one will ensue…) the use of the term “drop shadow” differs to my understanding of it when I was a signwriter and commercial artist some 35 years ago.

We used 2 principal types of shadow in our lettering work – block shadow and drop shadow. The shadow employed in the LFB typeface is what we referred to as a block shadow, as it adds a 3D block appearance to the letter. What we used and called a drop shadow was effectively a repetition of the letter form usually offset downwards and to one side by a distance of about 50-75% of the vertical stroke width, hence the term “drop” as it was dropped down and to one side. This sat behind the primary letter form and created the appearance of a 2-dimensional letter floating off the surface and casting a shadow. Interestingly, the corresponding Corel Draw menus use this terminology in the same way.

Further variations we employed were to have the shadow either touching the letter or leaving a small gap, hence we had 4 types of shadow: block-on, block-off, drop-on and drop-off. As well as enhancing the appearance, leaving a gap between the letter and shadow allowed you to work a little faster when signwriting as it took reduced the degree of precision required to get as decent looking outcome.

The knowledge and intimate understanding of letter forms gained during my signwriting career from 1981 to around 1991 still informs my work at Merson Group, the UK’s largest signmaker, working with organisations like Network Rail and Heathrow Airport and brands like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aston Martin and Lotus Cars.

So, in your own sphere of reference, is it a drop shadow or block shadow – discuss!

The beautiful gold type in the book, which sits nicely over the red. Replaced by jarring yellow, which is hard on the eyes and resembles something you’d find on a maccies box?

The application of type on the floor… what on earth…

The actual content chosen for said type…

The list goes on.

I’m amazing by how many large companies/collaborations, with so many talented, intelligent people get so bogged down in the process and seem to be more concerned with creating a great narrative of how they came to a solution, than actually if the thing will work in the given environment. Not only that, but just to take a step back and realise when something looks inherently terrible.