Chinatown

            This field outing we visited the three districts of china town, north beach and the financial district. All three of these districts have unique qualities that each one of them posses. Signage in each of the three districts differs, depended on the group of people they are trying to reach. It is interesting to contrast each district with each and see how each one chose to use signage in a different way After looking into each of the three distracts one stood out the most to me .the one of the districts that appeared to me as one of the most interesting was Chinatown.

            Chinatown has a rich history, and has become a very important part of San Francisco. Chinatown was first started in the year 1848,when the first Chinese immigrants started coming over. The first inhabitants of this part of the city were mainly from Hoisanese China. After a while a lot of different groups of people from China come over to San Francisco to live in Chinatown. This caused some problems and races wars started to erupt. Race wars were a big problem in this area, combined with the low income.  Chinatown eventually got their own squad of police, to help with the problem.            

The naiboughhood of China town is one of the working class parts of the city, while it is not as rich as some of the other parts, has a rich culture. Many immigrants from chins came during the 1960s,so with this influx of people made it grow even more

Chinatown has gained the nickname city with in a city because of its large size. San Francisco’s Chinatown is the largest one in America. This one has managed to keep a lot of the language and cultural aspects alive. By keeping more of their culture that originated back in China in this area is make makes San Francisco Chinatown unique and better than most others. When anyone visits China town it is hard not to be amazed by the buildings there. The buildings are beautiful and interestingly designed, you feel as if you are almost in China.

The signage in Chinatown is different than in most parts of the city. One of the first differences would be how almost all the signs are in Chinese. Because of the lower income of people who live in this area the signs is directed toward them, and completely different than a sleek sign of a store in Union square.  A lot of the buildings in China town are bight colors, which chat the eye of people as they are walking by.

            The signage in Chinatown is mostly old fashioned and not that high tech as that some stores have today. There are a lot of independent owned businesses, and their signs are not as big and eye grabbing as some other chain business. Technology has a big role to ply in how signs are made and used today. Some signs light up, flash and changed colors to grab people’s attention. Other signs are using more complicated art work in new ways. Also signs can be put at a high height to be seen by the people driving in cars. The way we view signage today is we aspect it to be bright and flashy with a lot of different aspects, just to get our attention. The image from the past that I chose was Chinatown Sacramento street. I like how even with the quality of the photo you can tell that not sigs were big and flashy like today. In contrast to this I found and image of today in Chinatown of a light up storefront sign. This shows how times have changed in the way we attract customers.

China town has a rich interesting culture and history. Out of the three districts that we visited this was the one that I thought was the most interesting to me. The culture here is strong and hopefully it stays that way, so it can continue to be an important part of San Francisco.