I’ve always loved vernacular design. That’s the technical term for “design made by local people who are not trained designers.” It’s found everywhere, at least wherever you find people who need to express something visually without the assistance of a non-local professional.

This is the real language of commerce, of the hundreds of thousands of anonymous small businesses that constitute a little discussed yet plainly significant portion of the global economy. Vernacular design is also the voice of individuals who need to tell the public something, whether plea, opinion, challenge or lament.

I spent an hour or two cruising for vernacular design on three streets in my neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. In a place as dense as New York City, it’s just about everywhere you look. Here’s a sampling of the neighborhood’s wonderfully untamed visual landscape in 2015.

The handmade

This is no objective, well-rounded survey of vernacular design in Bushwick. Though vernacular design may seem a niche genre, there’s plenty of diversity within it. I have my own aesthetic preferences and I allowed them to take over as I considered which examples to photograph.

One of these preferences is a strong bias towards the handmade. Handmade signage is endlessly varied and the results are often quite entertaining. Making a sign by hand opens up decorative possibilities that the computer wouldn’t readily allow.