If the spirit of Red Hook – its rugged industrial heritage and small-town warmth – were encapsulated as a typeface, what would it look like? Alexandre Noyer, a French illustrator and graphic designer, has an idea.

Noyer and his girlfriend visited the neighborhood in November. “We were totally charmed by this part of Brooklyn, our walks on the street and discovering the seafront, surrounded by beautiful brick walls, bars, cafes, and docks,” he recalled. It was a pleasure, he said, to “simply drink a beer in a bar, talking with people who live there.”

He also liked the look of some of the signs, old and new, that he spotted in the area – for instance, at 162 Van Dyke Street, whose wall advertises Steve’s Key Lime Pies; on the Red Hook Lobster Pound’s brick facade; and at the Waterfront Barge Museum, whose white letters stand up straight to identify the historic Lehigh Valley Barge #79. “Typography tells a story. It’s the first impression and visual influence before reading the message,” he explained.

After Noyer returned home to Rennes, he created a new font. “For me, it’s what I felt of the identity of Red Hook,” he said. “I tried to imagine the font faded on a massive brick wall or totally colorful on a storefront, as though the typography had always been part of the neighborhood.”

Anyone can download the font – called “Red Hook” – for free at https://www.dafont.com/red-hook.font. Noyer noted that he plans to visit Red Hook again “for sure.”

Author

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Comments are closed.

On Key

Related Posts

MUSIC: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Apparitions of the Eternal Earth. On their monolithic 2022 debut, Eyes Like Predatory Wealth, the Houston, TX trio Apparitions set forth a slow burn with three tracks running, in sequence, 10, 20 and 30 minutes. The fire has been spreading ever since. In 2023, they issued the digital-only Semel, with three poundingly untitled tracks, and this month comes Volcanic Reality (CD

Quinn on Books: “Lost in Love”

“Lost in Love”: Review of “Horse Crazy,” by Gary Indiana, introduction by Tobi Haslett,   Reviewed by Michael Quinn Years ago, I fell for a recovering drug addict. I met him at a funeral for a man we had both been involved with. When he caught me looking, he smiled—a slow, disarming gesture that made my heart thump like a

The Impact of 9,000 New Apartments on Red Hook: A Community’s Concerns

I’ve been trying to calculate how many new apartment buildings are needed to accommodate the 7,000 to 9,000 housing units the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) wants to add to our neighborhood to help pay for the redevelopment of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the 122-acre strip of waterfront extending from our neighborhood, through the Columbia Waterfront District, to Atlantic Avenue.