| ▲ | H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright Typographic Mystery(inconspicuous.info) |
| 74 points by mrngm 3 days ago | 17 comments |
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| ▲ | parpfish 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Im curious if the mounting points for the letters had 180deg rotational symmetry. If they didn’t (such as a mount point on the crossbar in the H), that’d go a long way to explaining “correctness”. |
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| ▲ | Cerium 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The second image in the article clearly shows screw holes in the letters. The H appears to be perfectly symmetric for 180 degree mounting. |
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| ▲ | greggsy 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I was initially interested but after skimming through I questioned if this pedantic detective tale needed to be told… Just send an email to the board of trustees / body corporate and move on. |
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| ▲ | tptacek an hour ago | parent [-] | | Please don't. We'll spend $500,000 tracking down what happened. |
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| ▲ | vessenes 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For the love of all this is holy, do not read this article. If the internet has taught has anything, it's that you cannot unsee an image - I predict you will not be able to unsee upside-down H's (and even an S) post-reading. Save yourself. |
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| ▲ | emmelaich 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| part2: https://www.inconspicuous.info/p/the-man-behind-the-upside-d... |
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| ▲ | peddling-brink 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is hidden behind a paywall. The curious part of me wants to know what the guy said, but the logical part of me knows it was likely little more than “oops”. |
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| ▲ | jsdalton 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I was more bothered by the extraneous word spacing on the second line, between “and” and “the.” Is it just me? |
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| ▲ | brudgers a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I would not be surprised if the manufactured letters and their installation was based on hand hand drawn letters. That it is not aesthetically obvious, suggests it was drawn that way and not a mistake. Good typography is subtle and bespoke typography even more so. |
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| ▲ | mjg59 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The article makes clear that the orientation of the lettering has changed over time, which counts against the idea that what it is now necessarily reflects the original intent. | | |
| ▲ | brudgers 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fair enough. To me the evidence in the article still suggests that “hard correctness” is probably not historically appropriate…hand lettering is not a typeface. That’s really where I am coming from — the perspective of historical architecture, historical architectural practice, and historical methods of delivering buildings. In particular, today’s mythological Wright is not the 1908’s historical Wright on a commercial jobsite. And the contractual relationships of a 1908 construction project were not delineated like current construction projects. | | |
| ▲ | saghm 37 minutes ago | parent [-] | | And yet the article shows the original sketches Wright made for the building that show the asymmetrical H's with the bars aligned with the bars on the E's (i.e on the upper half) in virtually identical font to what was eventually installed. I don't really see how you can come away with the conclusion that this suggests lack of intent; at most, it seems like you had already formed the opinion that there was no intent, and you didn't find the evidence to the contrary convincing enough that you were wrong. I don't think your take is necessarily wrong, but I don't think it's fair to characterize the evidence as suggesting what you're saying. |
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