Spotted this curious old advertising sign in Brixton Road, London, today. It’s just across the road from Workspace’s new Kennington Park HQ. Here we’re working with office refurb experts Faithdean plc to transform the interiors with frosted window vinyls and digital wallpaper, plus create and implement the wayfinding.

Looks like the sign – and its disturbing message – are about to give up the ghost. Just as many of the fans of this brand of cigarette did. (A little detective work shows that it was Craven A.)

You’ll find a lot more old hand-painted signs at The History of Advertising Trust.

And if you need hand-painting, window and wall graphics in vinyl, wallpaper designed and made to measure or wayfinding for your own interiors or signage project, give Glyphics a call on 020 7739 7818

That’s the story behind this fascinating little news clip from the BBC’s David Sillito. So what type type are you?

Typeface guru, Simon Garfield reckons there are around 100,000 fonts available to choose from online these days.

Pick the wrong one and you could give yourself a digital personality you really don’t like.

If you’re ever in Holland between 1 October and 5 December, you’ll get the answer to both.

That’s because they’re Dutch chocolate moulds. They’re used to create the initial letters of people’s names in milk, white and plain chocolate. These are traditional St Nicholas gifts in Holland and other places where the Dutch have settled but apparently nowhere else.

Foodie letters have a surprisingly long history in the Low Countries. Back in the Middle Ages, it seems kids learned to read with letters made of bread and got to eat them if they did well. You can also see alphabet pastries in old Dutch paintings. Even butchers got into the act by making fonts with sausages.

We’re great letter collectors at Glyphics. So we were delighted to find these old metal moulds in a Hastings junk shop a few months back. But have to ask: how on earth did they get there?

And if you want to take a closer look at them – and spot the typeface – please call in at our studio at 75 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4QS.

(You can find lots more about Dutch chocolate letters at the fabulous St Nicholas Center site. Plus an alphabet of moulds here“,”A chocolate fix for font fans?

If you want to see how designers and art directors got to grips with fonts in the days before Macs and Letraset, head to the Glyphics studio at 75 Leonard Street, London EC2 and take a look at our new wall graphics.

The design’s based on a student’s tracing sheet, published by The Monotype Corporation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They sold them from their Publicity Office at 44 Fetter Lane, London EC4, for 6d each. Most typefaces had at least three sheets, some five. So a single font could set you back half a crown. (That’s 25p today.)

What were they for? Well, each time you wanted to check how long a headline was going to be in a specific font and type size for your ad, brochure or poster, you had to trace it off by hand from a sheet like this. (Phew.)

This example’s been kindly loaned to us by our friends at St Bride Printing Library, Blackfriars. They think they only have about 78. That’s because the sheets were hard used and then just thrown away. So they’re pretty rare these days.

How will 2012 visitors find their way around London? Who’s putting fun into street signs in Hackney? And how do two design icons – the Tube map and the London Transport roundel – work so brilliantly together? Get all the answers at ‘Signs and the City’, a free talk at the London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, on Tuesday 20 September 2011, starting at 6.30pm. It’s a subject that’s close to our heart at Glyphics. So we’ll be there. Hope you will too.

Forty of London’s best restaurants are serving taster menus at the Taste of London festival in Regent’s Park this weekend (despite the rain). And for Bocca di Lupo Glyphics is an essential ingredient.

That’s because we’ve taken graphics designed by Here Design and produced and installed them in the pop-up where Bocca di Lupo and Gelupo will be offering great hand-made Italian food and fabulous gelati. Look out for their amazing ice cream cart, specially imported from Italy.

And if you can’t get to Taste to see our work, no problem. Just pop into Harvey Nicks instead between now and 3 July 2011 and follow our wolf’s pawprints to the Gelupo Gelateria on the 5th Floor.

Need a pop-up or exhibition stand? Expertly designed, created and installed at competitive prices? Give Glyphics a call on 020 7739 7818.

I thought you’d like to see this oil painting by Ken White, a former signwriter at the Great Western Railway Works at Swindon. It’s in the Steam Museum there and shows a classic scene from the Carriage and Wagon Works with the signwriters ‘branding’ the side of a coal wagon free-hand.

These craftsmen would have been responsible for all the really intricate lettering, lining and crests that you used to see all over railway engines, carriages and the stations themselves in the old days. They were brilliant at everything from gilding and drop shadows to heraldry. They were right at the top of their craft and their work is beautiful to see. No vinyl lettering back then!

Note the ball of string in the signwriter’s pocket. That’s for ‘snapping’ his chalk line.

Need an expert in signwriting, hand painting or gilding for your own projects? We’re carrying on these great traditions at Glyphics so please give us a call: 020 7739 7818.

Come along and meet members of the Glyphics team this week. We’ll be at the Made In Clerkenwell event at Craft Central from Thursday 19 May until Sunday 22 May, alongside some brilliant people who love craft traditions just as much as we do.

Find all the details about the event here. And look out for this logo at the entrance (installed by us) and for the famous Glyphics ampersand stand on the ground floor of Craft Central, St John’s Square, London EC1.

See you there.

Did you know we use this term in the vinyl sign business?

We have to pick out all the vinyl bits we don’t want when we apply the pre-cut vinyl sheet to a substrate and we call it ‘Weeding”! We do it all by hand using a scalpel. So think of us when we have to pick out all the negative shapes on some 20pt lettering!!

Do kids still get slates at school to practise their letters and nurture budding Picassos? Using a chalk to make your mark has to be the best kind of instant messaging. It’s also one of the oldest. Even the cavemen did it. So we think every 21st century grown-up will get a kick from this fab blackboard vinyl. It’s matt black with all the appearance, texture and characteristics of the blackboard you knew and loved in the classroom. It’s also self-adhesive so it’s easy to self-install, cut to any shape you choose, write on with ordinary chalk and wipe clean with a damp cloth.

So why bother with all the mess and hassle of painting with blackboard paint? Contact us now for a free sample and get an instant effect.