Graphique de la Rue: The Signs of Paris

Paris is a city of pure enchantment, and everyone who loves the City of Light has a Parisian muse, from the Tour Eiffel to CREME CARAMEL. For celebrated graphic designer and incessant flaneur Louise Fili, it's the city's dazzling signage. For more than four decades, Fili has strolled picturesque Parisian rues and boulevards with map and camera, cataloging the work of generations of sign craftsmen.Graphique de la Rue is Fili's photographic diary of hundreds of Paris's most inventive restaurant, shop, hotel, street, and advertising signs. Classic neon cafe signs are juxtaposed with the dramatic facades of the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergere. Colourful mosaics cheerfully announce hotel entrances, department stores, fishmongers, even public toilets. Hector Guimard's legendary entrances to the Paris Metro stations brush elbows with graceful gold-leaf and dimensional Art Deco, Futurist, or Art Nouveau architectural lettering, as well as whimsical pictorial signs (giant eyeglasses announc