Good news at Donlands (Joe Clark: TTC Signs)

Good news at Donlands

I complain a lot that TTC doesn’t know how good its type and tiles are. But last week (roughly November 12–16, 2007), late most nights I saw paint crews touching up Donlands station.

Donlands station has WET PAINT signs as man in safety vest works on the tile wall

(It’s pronounced like Badlands, by the way – you say Donlands, not Donlindz.)

Zooming back and forth on the subway that week, I realized they were carefully painting the brown sandblasted letterforms in the tile and the white sandblasted letterforms in the strapline. The photo above shows that they overshot the letterforms in the strapline. I guess they cleaned it up afterward, because the finished result is perfect.

Tiled wall reads DONLANDS in widely-spaced brown letters and, at top, DONLANDS In white on a brown stripe

DONLANDS in bright white letters on black strapline at top of wall, EXIT sign in enamelled steel

Letters DS in brown paint on a tile wall

It seems they can take care of what they’ve got – if they put their minds to it.

And they did the same thing at Chester

...in the last week of November ’07.

CHESTER in white letters on green strapline; green tiles with orange dot

Do I see a pattern developing? (Things might be tricky at Castle Frank, where the lettes in the strapline are the colour of main tiles, as though the strapline tiles had two layers. Nonetheless, I would not shed a tear if all strapline type were repainted white.)