Exotic pet shop, Brno
By the time this photo was taken (June 2010), the letter t went missing. It was still in place in July 2009.
Juke-Box is an all-lowercase typeface by Dutch designer Henk Jukkema. It was released by Letraset competitor Mecanorma in or before January 1971. A decade later, around 1982, the constructed design with the circular cookie-cutter counters and the smiling e provided the basis for the physical letters mounted on the shop front of Exotic, a pet shop in Brno, Czechia.
Unlike in the original rub-down alphabet, the proportions are less squat, the radius of the rounded terminals in t and i is smaller, and the apertures in x and c were opened up. The negative dot on i was probably closed initially, as in Jukkema’s design, but the top left part of the ring broke off eventually.
The shop’s old website at exoticbrno.com (active until 2021) featured this logo in a slightly different rendition. The current one, apparently launched in 2022 coinciding with the fortieth anniversary, no longer relies on this charmingly wonky wordmark.
You can trace some of the sign’s evolution on Google Street View.
By August 2011, the sign was restored, now with a green background.
Sometime between June 2017 and April 2019, the sign vanished when the building was renovated. The logo in Juke-Box is still present, but only as adhesive foil on the windows (accompanied by Arial). Above the door, one can spot the Sera logo.
2 Comments on “Exotic pet shop, Brno”
Beautiful sign. I couldn’t help but notice that sometime between 2017 and 2019 the tree in front of the shop also disappeared.
:(