Spot the difference! The covers of the two editions are almost identical, because the neon lettering of the Motel Hamburg has hardly changed.
The development becomes clear on the very first page: many of the signs from the 2010 edition of Hamburg Alphabet had disappeared in 2020.
Don’t worry, the sign of Hamburg’s fairground “DOM” is still there, it was just mothballed when the Heiligengeistfeld was being renovated.
Unfortunately lost forever: The Ö that looked like an udder on the homemade sign of a hairdresser shop—<3!
If you are not only interested in Hamburg’s shop signs, but also in the city’s history, you should leaf through both books at the same time and compare. The before and after photos tell you a lot about how the city’s surface changed between 2010 and 2020.
Hamburg shop signs
from A to Z
For the Hamburg Alphabet, I rode my bike 1547 km through Hamburg and photographed over 1000 different signs. The 220 most remarkable ones are in the book, in alphabetical order—as a typographic portrait of the city.
Like every portrait, the Hamburg Alphabet was a snapshot. That’s why I’ve published an updated new edition to mark the book’s tenth anniversary. The layout is the same, but I re-photographed all the signs. Some pages only show empty walls, because since 2010 more than 40 percent of the signs in the book have disappeared.
Hamburg shop signs, ten years later
Spot the difference! The covers of the two editions are almost identical, because the neon lettering of the Motel Hamburg has hardly changed.
The development becomes clear on the very first page: many of the signs from the 2010 edition of Hamburg Alphabet had disappeared in 2020.
Don’t worry, the sign of Hamburg’s fairground “DOM” is still there, it was just mothballed when the Heiligengeistfeld was being renovated.
Unfortunately lost forever: The Ö that looked like an udder on the homemade sign of a hairdresser shop—<3!
If you are not only interested in Hamburg’s shop signs, but also in the city’s history, you should leaf through both books at the same time and compare. The before and after photos tell you a lot about how the city’s surface changed between 2010 and 2020.
Hamburg shop signs
from A to Z
For the Hamburg Alphabet, I rode my bike 1547 km through Hamburg and photographed over 1000 different signs. The 220 most remarkable ones are in the book, in alphabetical order—as a typographic portrait of the city.
Like every portrait, the Hamburg Alphabet was a snapshot. That’s why I’ve published an updated new edition to mark the book’s tenth anniversary. The layout is the same, but I re-photographed all the signs. Some pages only show empty walls, because since 2010 more than 40 percent of the signs in the book have disappeared.
Hamburg shop signs, ten years later
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No really,
you should subscribe to my newsletter.
You’ve already subscribed to far too many newsletters, I know. But my newsletter is really great! At least that’s what it says in the spontaneous replys I get each time I send one out.
So if you want to be the first to know what I’m working on, what events Im organizing and what books I’m recommending,