The Global Shopfront Library

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About The Global Shopfront Library

I love shopfronts. I love their randomness and their invention. I love the way they’re painted and decorated. I love their signs and their imagery. I love their brashness and their sense of fun.

Shopfronts are an impossibly rich source of information, entertainment and delight. They’re where you go when you want to take the temperature of an economy or understand a society. Shopfronts are an economy’s street-level DNA.

When you visit a city for the first time a walk in a shopping district will bring you up to speed quickly with its habits and its passions. Shops are always the first to respond when an economy booms or busts. New ideas hit the streets through the shops. Shopfronts are how we get to see these ideas.

Shops, especially the little ones, are alive with authentic vernacular communication. They’re a collision of architecture and graphic design, they’re informal and indigenous and often the most powerful messages on the street.

If you can, geotag your pics so we can place them on a map. If you’d like to know more or if you’d like to participate, drop me a line.

Flickr friend Liz Newton runs two excellent groups with shop themes of her own: Small British Shop Fronts and Celebrating Small British Shops, both of which I can recommend.