Shopfront race to the bottom

Seriously – how many convenience stores does a city need? One for ever inhabitant? Is that the convenience? your own store?

What a farce. I presume they will want to link through to the existing store next door (also within the Burton building) to create another mini supermarket concept, as per Merrion Row et al. Alternatively, if permission is not granted, they will just switch premises, while also leaving their unauthorised signage mess behind them, which was never followed up on – as usual.

Dame Street badly needs ACA and Special Planning Control designations to control uses such as this, but as usual, the mechanisims will be begrudgingly slapped on (if it even gets that far) after the horse has bolted.

(As an aside, the stable door has been swinging for the best part of a decade, but then who actually cares about one of the principal thoroughfares of the city?).

@davidarthurs wrote:

Perhaps a group should get together to report illegal banners to avoid the problems of reports coming from an individual.

I have a ton of letters from DCC regarding illegal banners. Having emigrated I’d love to pass the torch. I can also put you in touch with some like-minded people.

I have also found calling Marketing Managers directly claiming to represent groups has worked in getting them removed. A lot of major brand name marketing teams are under the bizarre and plainly wrong illusion that fabric banners do not need permission as they are “temporary”.

The new advertising strategy document does not spell this out nearly clearly enough.

Posted this on College Green thread but the issue is referred to above.

Okay so not strictly about the design of shops/shopfronts (DCC guidelines cannot be found on website and most of the hard copies were dumped last year to ‘make space’ and besides they all related to O’Connell Street which was confusing for everyone else in the city), but…

http://www.pivotdublin.com/index.php/blog/entry/call_out_for_design_shops_for_pivot_dublin_map_guide

Wow – wonder what it is?

The signage is still too big – surely 400mm is recommended, not 450mm? Also, if we’re serious about setting any sort of standard for the O’Connell Street ACA (in which this is sited) then a bronzed or brushed steel finish should be applied to the lettering rather than corporate red:

“Interests should note that the use of a corporate image including advertising and signage will not necessarily be favourably considered – and that the street scene will be considered more important than uniformity between branches of one company.”

I see Supermac’s have gone to town in further signage additions to their shopfront a few doors down over the Christmas period, including the addition of a hideous ‘Papa John’s’ 1970’s style back-lit sign, as per the multiple units they also erected at least three years ago on their O’Connell Street outlet, which are still in situ on their elegant 1910s shopfront along with a host of unauthorised posters and adhesives plastering all the windows, with zero enforcement action taken as ever. So much for the farce of the SAPC ‘review’.

Shopfronts have gone completely to pot in Dublin, with recent shocking interventions in Capel Street, Dame Street, Grafton Street, the quays and even poor Gardiner Street – in the latter’s case a relatively sophisticated, boom-period flamed limestone shopfront adjacent to Mountjoy Square has just been completely clad out from top to bottom in trashy laundry signage, destroying literally half the streetscape. A crack-team unit in DCC is now urgently required.

Remember this?

Well its now this…

Its a piss-poor paint job that unfortunately doesnt do any justice to the lovely detailing on this frontage. However at least the epileptic fits have stopped along this part of the quays.

A restoration project for you Ryan’s pub, Queen Street:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Just one attractive hanging sign. Back then conservation areas were conservation areas without being conservation areas.

@exene1 wrote:

A restoration project for you Ryan’s pub, Queen Street:
Just one attractive hanging sign. Back then conservation areas were conservation areas without being conservation areas.

All that crap is removable, fundamentally the building has been preserved. I’d be more concerned to get BARGAINTOWN BARGAINTOWN BARGAINTOWN BARGAINTOWN BARGAINTOWN to understand what a planning permission is. In all their time in business at that premises, they have not once applied for permission for signage changes, nor ANY other planning permission.

To give them their due however, at least they dropped the hideous signage at the corner in favour of the ART tunnel project.