Central Avenue was originally created for the graphic identity of an exhibition celebrating Birmingham’s infamous 1886 exhibition of Local Manufacturers and Natural History.

The core of the identity was the bespoke typeface that we created based on the hand-painted signs from the original exhibition. The typeface style that they employed wasn’t the typical decorative Victorian face, it was a simple sans serif – much more industrial and much more relevant for a contemporary exhibition of its kind.

What was essential was to not loose the essence of the original designs through digitising. We wanted to make sure that we managed to retain some of the awkwardness and personality that the hand painted letter forms had. Rather than imagining the lowercase characters, we decided to keep it ‘Victorian’ and designed a superscripted alternative that enables the user to create their own word logos.