This is the sign for a restaurant on Grønnegade on a building in a prominent position that closes the view up Ny Aldelgade from Kongens Nytorv.

On the whole, commercial signs in the city are good but I have definite reservations about this sign.

At first, it seems to have been designed with relative care, with the neon lettering on a clear background, and that must have been a condition for planning permission but this was an important shop for paint and pigments and the beautiful typography of the original sign, cut into stone, has survived on what is a good, high-quality, historic facade.

Look carefully and you see that the fixings for the new sign are drilled straight into the original stonework and when removed the drilled holes will have caused damage that will have to be repaired ….. and this seems to be completely unnecessary as the sign is not the main sign with the restaurant name - that is actually in the window below - but for a rather feeble joke.

Signs for shops - particularly when they are signs with symbols for a trade - developed when many people in a city were illiterate. For the same reason - to attract customers and to advertise what they were selling - street traders and vendors at markets and fairs, shouted out what they were selling. Some shops don't seem to have realised that most of us are not illiterate and not short sighted - distracted maybe but illiterate and short sighted no.

The banner style of sign, sticking out from the shop front so they can be seen as you walk along the street, are fine and in Copenhagen there are plenty of examples that are clever and funny and well designed.

It's the over-big and badly-designed signs I don't like and particularly when they are the one-style-for-everywhere signs of corporate branding. It's the visual equivalent of having shopkeepers shout at me as I walk along the street.

Curiously, most of us are not wandering the streets with no idea why we are there or where we are going until a large, badly designed sign, reminds us we are hungry and desperately need a cheap burger.

And with phone apps shouldn't large and bad signs be redundant? Most people, thanks to an app, know what they want and where to go to get it.

I'd be quite happy if Google came up with software that gave users a mildly severe shock every time they got near a burger place and shouted into their earbud

"oi - you feel hungry - you need chips"

…. a sort of revenge for me having to walk around and avoid all those people staring down at their phone rather than watching where they are walking.

end of grumpy rant