Warsaw Neon comes from a state programme, not a marketplace. From the late 1950s the enterprise *Reklama* hired poster artists to bend glass over the shops, cinemas and cafés of a rebuilt capital, and the results were drawn by hand before they were ever lit — Jan Mucharski's volleyball player at Plac Konstytucji, the Cepelia Rooster, a hundred script logotypes above doorways.

The system takes its rules from that night city. Grey socialist-modernist plaster goes unlit and reads as near-black; a small number of signs carry every bit of colour and light on the page. Type is stroked, not filled. Space between signs is the point, and the mounting hardware stays visible.