If you recognize the typeface above you are either a student of retail or a student of design. Or a Pacific Northwesterner, since this was the Nordstrom logo back in 1930 when we were a Seattle-only shoe store.

Now we're national and international-with our second Canadian store opening in August in Vancouver, B.C. Next year we'll add Toronto.

Learn about the features and history of this old-school Nordstrom typeface below, with commentary from Strath Shepard, our Creative Director of Designer and Pop-In@Nordstrom-hands-down the biggest font nerd we know.

-Andrew Matson

I love how exaggerated it is. It's based on the typeface Futura, which was invented by Paul Renner in 1927 and came from Bauhaus typefaces.

There's something about it that's very modern and forward-thinking, but it's also kind of Old West. I like the overemphasized Os and the way the points on the M and the Ns go above the normal cap height, the standard height of capital letters.

You'll notice it has an apostrophe S. We lost that around 1955. Some people still say Nordstrom's -and I guess that's not totally wrong.

Our current logo is super versatile-it's a cross between a serif and a sans serif, basically a serif typeface with the the serifs removed. It has a special place in my heart and I love it. But I think my favorite one is the 1930 logo.

-Strath Shepard