This week is Phoenix Design Week and the main event will be the PHXDW Conference this weekend, bringing together a number of speakers to talk about design.
Nikki Villagomez, author and chief marketing officer at the accounting and advisory firm BRC based in North Carolina, has written books based on her blog called "Culture + Typography." She says her background is in graphic design and along the way, she fell in love with typography. So, for more than a decade now, she’s been analyzing different signs, manhole covers and other kinds of city infrastructure.
Villagomez joined The Show to talk about what kinds of things she noticed when she started looking at these things that are kind of mundane, that a lot of people probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about.
Full conversation
NIKKI VILLAGOMEZ: I think that's what got my interest is, that they do seem mundane until you start to notice the little differences from city to city. So for example, with manhole covers, there's one in Oklahoma City that's a map and where you're standing on top of the manhole cover is a — you are here and it's a map of the city.
So it serves as a wayfinding, a dual purpose. The ones in Phoenix, I was happy to research and see, it has the city of Phoenix official seal and the flag of Phoenix on the manhole cover which fits perfectly in the circle. It's, they're, they're beautiful.
But then other cities, like Charlotte aren't so great, there's not much on them to note. So, it really depends, going from city to city, what information is on these covers. Some cities, they're very, very old, like in Louisville and Philadelphia, those manhole covers are very, very old. Some of them have the dates that date back to the 1800s. So, it's just been very interesting to see how different cities use these manhole covers in different ways.
MARK BRODIE: Do you find that for the cities that have some kind of design on something like a manhole cover? Do they see that as an opportunity to say something about the city, or market the city or brand the city in some way?
VILLAGOMEZ: Absolutely. And that is exactly what I have found is, there are cities who take the city seal or different aspects of the city and, and use the manhole covers to help brand the city, exactly like in Phoenix. I think it speaks a lot to the infrastructure of the government and how much money the city is putting back into these types of design elements, so that it will further brand the city.
BRODIE: Well, so given as we've discussed, like, how kind of mundane these things can be. How effective is that kind of branding? Like how beneficial is it to the city of Phoenix, for example, to have, you know, its city seal on the manhole covers. I mean, yes, they're aesthetically pleasing, but are a lot of people spending a lot of time looking at them and thinking, “oh, this is really cool, this really says Phoenix to me?”
VILLAGOMEZ: Probably not, probably not to the same extent that maybe banners on the side of a, a flag post would have on, you know, a main street in the downtown area. I don't know how many people are actually looking. But I don't know, I mean, I think it says a lot about the city that they're willing to brand top to bottom all the way down to what's on the middle of the street that cars go over.

BRODIE: Yeah, I'm curious what to you, it says about a particular community if you know, their, their signs have a particular font or, or logo on them or, you know, things like manhole covers or, you know, other sort of infrastructure type elements, you know, are, are branded, are, you know, all sort of have this sort of unifying theme. What does that say to you about a community?
VILLAGOMEZ: That they take the branding of the city very seriously and there's somebody in charge that really cares. So in Phoenix, the city, the city seal is on the street signs as well, so all of the street signs in downtown Phoenix have that same image that's also on the manhole cover. That is very unusual to see a city go to that extent to brand the wayfinding, brand the manhole covers, It is unusual but not, not, not so much so that I haven't seen it before, but you just don't see it that often.
BRODIE: What else have you noticed about Phoenix or, or some of the other Phoenix area cities when you sort of look at typography and look at, you know, these kinds of things through your particular lens?
VILLAGOMEZ: So the biggest thing that I've noticed as I've been preparing my presentation for this conference is how colorful the signage is within the city. I think if you're from that area, it probably doesn't stand out as being different. But, having traveled the country and seeing the different regions, I have noticed that the southwest in particular has very rich colors in their signs. There's a lot of earth tones and reds and greens and, and blues and bright colors.
I have not found that to be the same case in the Southeast. I don't, I don't see that much vibrant signs. I mean, yeah, you'll see a sign here and there that's vibrant but not to the extent that I have seen from my research in Phoenix.
BRODIE: That is interesting because like you would imagine, for example, a place like Las Vegas full of colors, full of signs full of like flashing lights, blinking lights. It's interesting that it's, you know, that, that you're noticing it in, in other places in the southwest besides just, besides just sort of the obvious one.
VILLAGOMEZ: Right. So, there are some cities I exclude from research, not that I don't research them but they skew so much so. So for example, Las Vegas, New York City, Los Angeles. It's very hard to take those cities and compare them to, to Fort Wayne, Indiana, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, like you kind of have to take the extremes out of the equation when you're trying to figure out what is the theme of a particular city look like.
So, I would never compare a Las Vegas to a Phoenix. I would compare Phoenix to Albuquerque, and I do see a lot of similarities from my research there.
BRODIE: I'm wondering if you have found instances where cities have done a good job of marketing and branding, you know, their infrastructure in some way, but they almost didn't realize that that's what they were doing? Maybe the decisions were made for aesthetic reasons or for some other reason, and it just kind of a happy accident that, you know, you noticed it or someone else noticed it and said, “oh, you've done a really nice job branding.” And someone in the city is like, “oh, yeah, sure. That's exactly what we were doing.”
VILLAGOMEZ: Yeah. So the best example I have for that is in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A group of students designed a typeface to brand the city and the city ended up adopting it and using it for all of their government and signs and wayfinding and manhole covers, and it's called Chat, short for Chattanooga. And that has been my favorite example.
I would say Charleston, South Carolina, is a very pedestrian city and they have their wayfinding, because it is so many people walking. In addition to the street signs where you would normally see them above you, they also have them in the ground, and I have found a lot of streets in places where you, there are a lot of people walking, they put the street signs in the ground as well to help with moving traffic.