Buildings of Detroit

After finishing the my Detroit Concert Series, I started thinking about other places in Detroit that deserved recognition. While the urban decay of Detroit is nationally known, there are many buildings with rich histories and phenomenal architecture. The Penobscot is one such building. Without giving a complete architectural history, the Penobscot Building was designed in two stages by Donaldson & Meier (1905 and 1916) and later by Wirt Rowland for the firm of Smith, Hinchman and Grylls (1928). It is one of my favorite skyscrapers of all time and I thought it would be the best place to start a new series.

 I particularly like the border I designed for this piece. I wanted something Art Deco and clean to reflect the design of the building. Once I had the font picked out for this piece, I started playing around with the extra symbols and notation markers that came with the font. The border is actually two paragraph symbols (¶) turned face to face, then put end to end. I was quite pleased that something so simple could end up being so effective as an Art Deco element.

I'm not sure where this series will go- will I keep it skyscrapers only? Detroit isn't exactly skyscraper central and there are MANY smaller buildings that are just as interesting and beautiful. Will I keep it a series of four like the Venue series? Again, there are so many cool buildings here in Detroit it could be tough narrowing it down to four or five or six... I have my eye on a couple though, so we'll see how it goes. And even if this never turns into a series of four or six, I think this piece is a fitting tribute to the beautiful and often overlooked architecture of Detroit.