Monday, 8:00am
24 December 2012
King’s Cross in Gotham
Typographic Christmas decorations cheer weary travellers between station and Central Saint Martins
Just outside the new entrance to King’s Cross station in London, the shiny red hoardings concealing the construction work have been dotted with foot-high snowflake transfers since the beginning of December, writes Anne-Marie Conway.
Hoardings at King’s Cross.
Top: snowflakes inside CSM visitors’ centre made from clear and white acrylic. Photography: Zvezdan Bozinovski.
More of the same, this time in 3D, decorate the ‘boulevard’ that leads to the University of the Arts.
Exterior snowflakes made from PVC foamex. Photography: John Sturrock.
Yet on closer inspection, these large baubles reveal themselves to be festive wreaths of letters. In Gotham – the celebrated typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones. (See ‘Forensic types’, Eye 54.)
All the snowflakes are made from the letters in the name ‘King’s Cross’ – subtle branding for this once less salubrious neighbourhood.
The installation is entitled Abstracted Snowflakes, designed by Catherine Borowski and Philip Cooper for Produce UK.
A typographic Christmas to one and all.
For information about events in the King’s Cross ‘mini winter wonderland’, which runs until 5 January 2013, follow @kingscrossn1c on Twitter.
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