Quote:
Originally Posted by bryanscott
The signage is incredible. All of it.
Are there any historians out there that can tell me why and when businesses stopped investing in their signage?
I have a few theories swirling around in my head, some of which I might have read along the way, others which I might have completely made up.
1. Modern city planning (1960s) frowned upon this kind of signage, which was seen as unnecessary visual clutter.
2. Home computers and desktop publishing "empowered" business owners to "design" their own signage (or hire their 12-year old nephews). I guess this would have been early- to mid-eighties.
3. The internet redirected where business owners spent their money. Pre-internet promotional dollars were spent on signage, whereas nowadays they're spent on websites.
Does any of this add up? All I know for sure is that modern-day signage pales in comparison to the signage of yesterday. We've lost so much—not just the pure-eye candy, but the way this signage engages pedestrians and enriches the walkability of commercial blocks.
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Probably all of those. I can think of a few others:
4. Faster traffic speeds meant that motorists couldn't read signs unless they were large and plain. That led to the plastering over of entire facades as backgrounds for huge signs that squarely faced the street. I remember those on Main Street with Wilson's and Ashdown's, and others I'm sure.
5. Rising energy bills probably encouraged the replacement of a lot of illuminated signs with simpler versions.
6. As business migrated to the malls, less profitable businesses moving into the stores couldn't afford elaborate signs.
7. I would imagine there were fewer skilled sign makers as all of this occurred.
8. Association of neon signs with sleaziness (which would have happened as businesses catering to the middle-class abandoned their high-street locations for malls). The Bell Hotel is my most deeply engrained memory of a neon sign in Winnipeg - or the Shanghai maybe.
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