Googie × Hand-Painted Signage

Pair Googie forms with sign-painter scripts and shaded lettering for convincing diner, motel and bowling-alley signage.

From the research on Googie & Atomic Age

Mix them and make something Googie Hand-Painted Signage

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Googie, their arrangement from Googie, the finish from Hand-Painted Signage. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Googie & Atomic Age Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

Type from Hand-Painted Signage: Hand-lettering
Script
Colour from Googie: Pastel
Limited spot colours
Form from Googie: Angular & zigzag
Cosmic & celestial
Composition from Googie: Diagonal axis
Dynamic asymmetry
Surface from Hand-Painted Signage: Hard offset shadow
Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Hand-Painted Signage

Yay!

Yellowtail, standing in for Brush script

Text · Googie

The exuberant commercial modernism of post-war American roadside culture (coffee shops, motels, car washes, bowling alleys and neon signs), named in 1952 by critic Douglas Haskell after John Lautner's Googie's coffee shop in Los Angeles (1949). Upswept roofs, boomerangs, starbursts, atoms and parabolic arches worked as giant signs for passing drivers, with casual scripts and neon promising a Space Age future.

Jost; Googie used Neon-tube script lettering and Dom Casual

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Googie, with a counter-accent from Hand-Painted Signage. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Googie & Atomic Age Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

#1e2b4a ground · 36%
#f3ead6 ink · 14%
#f2673a accent · 18%
#c99a2e accent · 14%
#f6cf3f accent · 10%
#b8262b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #1e2b4a;
  --ink: #f3ead6;
  --accent-1: #f2673a;
  --accent-2: #c99a2e;
  --accent-3: #f6cf3f;
  --accent-4: #b8262b;
  --font-display: "Yellowtail", cursive;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

The two styles

A glowing retro space-themed sign reads “Orbit Bites” in large turquoise and orange cursive on a dark navy background. A rocket, ringed planet, starbursts, sweeping yellow trails and angular pink panels surround the lettering.

1945–1965 · North America Googie & Atomic Age The exuberant commercial modernism of post-war American roadside culture (coffee shops, motels, car washes, bowling alleys and neon signs), named in 1952 by critic Douglas Haskell after John Lautner's Googie's coffee shop in Los Angeles (1949). Upswept roofs, boomerangs, starbursts, atoms and parabolic arches worked as giant signs for passing drivers, with casual scripts and neon promising a Space Age future.

An ornate rectangular sign reads “RIVER MARKET” in large cream-and-gold capital letters on a dark green background, with red shadows on the top word and blue shadows below. Gold borders and scrolling flourishes surround the lettering, with red decorative motifs in the black corners and visible painted texture throughout.

1800–present · Global / networked Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Letters painted by trained sign writers on fascias, windows, walls, vehicles and showcards, from Victorian gold leaf on glass to Mexican rótulos, Indian bazaar boards and Ghanaian barbershop signs. Brush-built letters with shading, drop shadows and outlines are fitted to the panel and mixed in a few styles for hierarchy, valuing legibility at a distance and the painter's flourish; vinyl displaced the craft in the 1980s and it has revived since the 2010s.

More combinations

With Googie

All 17 combinations with Googie

With Hand-Painted Signage

All 29 combinations with Hand-Painted Signage

Every style combination