The following is only PART of the massive collection of hand-painted letterings they’ve got over at TypeArchive – a fantastic site of no-holds-barred sharing in extremely simple galleries made for simplicity. There’s a list of contributors to that site and that list is also below. This is hand-painted typography. This is lettering. There’s nothing I love more when it comes to finding a good example of fantastic graphic design because it fires on all cylinders. A person who’s good at this kind of craft is almost always a master at the whole rest of the world of design arts. It’s like Leon said in the movie The Professional: “the knife is the last thing you learn.” Once you’re that close to the action, you’ve already gotten good at everything else far away.

This post could easily also have been titled “Hand Painted Signage in the USA.”

These photos are all classified as “North America” because that’s where they were captured, but if you take a close look, (cross referencing with the TypeArchive site’s other region categories,) you’ll see that a lot of the type styles are universal. Then there’s letterings that seem to be strictly USA like the image above. Look at those squares! That photo was taken of a freight elevator in New York, New York, and can only be described as totally swanky.

Contributors to this set: Peter Odywer, Chris Pacetti, Warren Elwin, Shane Durrant, Jeffrey Nimer, PJ Chmiel, Gary Fogelson, Benoit Santiard, Ovidiu Hrin, and Cherie Benoit. Have a heaping helping of a look at the limited gallery below for more fun, then head on over to the TypeArchive archive for a heavier glance.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies lettering category.