Downtown

In my opinion, downtown is the best place in the city to see how type interacts with its surroundings and with one another. After seeing all the presentations of the history of the western alphabet, I can really see how type has evolved from wall carvings to computer typing. As I walked past union square, of course the only thing I can see are typefaces. In this picture, you can see Barneys in the background, Crate & Barrel in the middle ground, and FIDM in the foreground.

Barneys is in the typeface, Augustus, which draws inspiration from classical and roman styles.

Crate and Barrel is in the ever so popular sans serif, Helvetica.

I could not find the typeface for FIDM, but I get the feeling this type was created in the era of computer innovations. The "D" lacks natural curves, so I assume it might have been a pixel based font.

Although I can't get into the technicalities, I would like to think these typefaces represent the past, present, and future.