Design around Amstelpark

The old “don’t leave valuables in your car” sign was a cartoon of a fat man with a stubly face, a mask and a crowbar. It had a caption: “nothing in, nothing out“.

The new sign is an artsier affair. Not only does it depict a broken window, it also suggests the designer cracked that whole signing thing. The way it’s executed though makes it look as if a lot of little fingers are pointing at the letter P.

The miniature parking spots are for cargo bikes.

Bicycle manufacturer Fietsfabriek went bankrupt last year. Rumour has it they wanted to get rid of those pesky creditors. The new Fietsfabriek sells scooters too. The box on the back of this scooter is theirs. I am not sure it was sold with the scooter—the paint is slightly different for starters. The box immediately makes me think of the scooters of delivery boys, but it’s too small to carry pizzas. The owner presumably put it there for groceries, or because she thought it looked cool.

Do paviours like to be bested by street sign makers? Probably not. The white bricks here warn oncoming car drivers of the speed bump, but what are those black bricks doing there? Did the paviours have a couple left, did they think “waste not, want not”? Or were they trying to go for all black and white, until they ran out of black?

But more importantly, why did they choose this pattern? It’s too random to be unintentional.

If you’re thinking that I am unusually wordy around my photos today, you’re right. I read Ik zie ik zie last weekend, Hans Aarsmans collection of photo essays. (He’s wordier.) I think he broke me.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2011 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Lightsmithing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.