welovedesignetc
The design courses blog for BA (Hons)
and HND Vis Comm at Edinburgh College

#berlin15 - Buchstaben

3 February 2015

Berlin is home to the Buchstaben Museum, which has an amazing collection of neon signs, letters and fonts from the former GDR.  Last year our visit to see this unique collection was a highlight of the trip, so this year we returned with an even bigger group of design students.

The collection is housed in an old supermarket on Holzmarktstraße, a few minutes south of Alexanderplatz, and features an array of signage salvaged and renovated from the shops, factories and public buildings of East Berlin after the fall of the Wall in 1989. The museum shop sells some of these original typographic artefacts, as well as stocking a bunch of awesome posters, pamphlets, accessories and type books. This year there was also a small exhibition focussing on a number of famous Berlin-based typographers and their working methods, including Erik Spiekermann.