TRANSLATION

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Let's discover Museum of Letters! 

I visited the Museum of Letters in Berlin on the second Saturday of July. 
Used signage and neon signs which used to be used places such as shops are 
stored in this museum. I found about the museum right before I came to 
Berlin and fortunately I was able to visit there during my stay in Berlin. 

Barbara, who is a graphic designer, have collected signage but she was no 
longer able to store them in her room due to evolving her collection. Then 
she met Anja, who works as a press in one of the museums in Berlin. They 
decided to establish the Museum of Letters as a non-profit organization. 

In December 2008, they opened the showroom in Mitte, Berlin. At this point 
the showroom is open on the second Saturday of every month or by 
appointment. Because many design blogs have been featuring about the museum, 
they told me that there are not only visitors from Germany, but also many 
visitors from around the world. 

There are two showrooms which filled with letters. We often see those 
letters from far away. But from close distance, they give different 
impressions and we can really see the materials of the letters as well. 
There is also a letter which height is about 3 meters? 

In Germany, it costs to dispose of things like signage. Therefore, the 
stores, which closes down and don't need the signs anymore, are happy to 
give their signs away most of the times so they don't have to pay for the 
disposal. From that reason, most of the signage in the showroom were donated 
for free. However, there is a signage which cost 2500 Euro (about 330,000 
yen) to take in. 

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Because some of the letters are old, not all the typefaces of the letters 
are able to be distinguished. Sometimes people who read a newsletter from 
the museum give an information of what typefaces are used in certain 
signage. Barbara also told me that she sometimes try to match typefaces of 
the signage using a computer. 

I asked Barbara and Anja why they establish not gallery, but museum. Then 
they answer: 
„Running as a museum, not just one's hobby, makes us easy to communicate 
with others. Sometimes people are delighted to give us their signage with 
the fact that it is going to be exhibited in our museum. Also we are not 
focusing on who made signage, we are rather interested in the information 
and history of each signage and letter. In the future, we would like to 
exhibit our collections by theme.“ 

They are now trying to contact Air France, who renewed their identity in 
February 2009. In this case it also helps them to contact such a large 
corporate as a museum. 

At this point, there are over 400 letters are stored in the museum. Most of 
the time those letters are exhibited in inside so they don't get damaged. In 
near future, Barbara and Anja are planning to move the museum to a lager 
place to exhibit letters more effectively. 

Both Barbara and Anja told me that they are interested in not only alphabet 
letters, but other letters such as Asian letters. For them it would be very 
fascinating to see neon signs which are seen in all over Japan.