It’s always a delight to find an old sign like this that uses that hilariously clichéd and outdated font, Rickshaw, which surely ranks with Comic Sans as one of the biggest groaners in the world of typefaces.
Sherbrooke Street West in NDG. July 2, 2008
6 comments
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But dafont.com, one of the major sources of free fonts – based here – has a whole section of fonts labelled “foreign look” that includes plenty of faux Chinese and Japanese fonts as well as faux Arabic, Greek, Thai, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Hebrew and so on. And they’re still widely used non-ironically, for things like menus, or to add a touch of faux exoticism. I used a faux Japanese font recently for a graphic to publicize a karaoke event. They have their uses.
Nice composition and exposure. Perfect choice of time to take it.
Cringeworthiness of the font and “mets chinois” designation set aside, this is actually a rather good restaurant—nowhere near as tacky as the sign suggests.
You know this kind of sign tells you a couple things:
– the place has been there for a long time
– no doubt if it still stands it’s got to be good
– you can easily identify the place as a cheap tasty joint
– plus the cliché’d font is just that: a cliché. And you hope to find the cliché food in there and the cliché lady at the door
you know, overall this brings some confort in a city scape where everyone tries too hard to impress with fancy designs and elaborate branding where none is needed.
just my two cents
U
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stencilworks.finewar.ca
The Tchang Kiang has always had a good reputation in that part of town. It’s not the same “cheap tasty joint” menu (pineapple chicken and defrosted egg rolls) that you’ll see in many suburban spots. Their menu is more subtle and interesting than that (and not, for that matter, strikingly cheap).
You have been prowling in my neighborhood again. Great photo of this sign. There is much to be seen in NDG and Sherbrooke St….and it’s ever changing face, color, texture, smell, and sound.