Typo Tour: Nylex Plastics

At 7:24 on the morning of June 29, 2005, after 14 months of restoration costing $300,000, the Nylex clock was back on! And jammed. Time was standing still. Some sort of computer error. Fixed eventually, but now, mere months later, like some dodgy string of blinking globes around a Milk Bar sign, it's already lost lights again. Nylex's promise of "Every Time" now reads "Ever Time", which I find kind of amusing. Not as amusing, of course, as the time that I saw a glowing Red Rooster sign where the light had gone out in the 's', but "You'll tell the grandkids" experiences like that only come along every so often! In addition, the outlined 'N' in Nylex is also missing in action, so $300,000 well spent then.


I've never quite understood the appeal of the Nylex clock. I don't understand why it holds such a special place in the hearts of the community. It’s just a piece of corporate signage, isn’t it? Very old corporate signage, sure, but corporate signage none the less. It’s a nice treatment of the Nylex logo, with the lights and all, but if McDonalds or Nike rendered their logo in lights and bunged it on top of a silo for 44 years, would people be as enamoured? What's so special about Nylex? Do people just love their plastics so much that they now view Nylex as family? I guess people could love it because they've grown up with it as a part of the landscape, and now it's an icon of their childhood, or years gone by, or something?

So, what about the old Foxtel sign that used to sit below the Nylex clock? People hated that Foxtel sign. They weren’t even impressed by its enormous size, which you would have thought would count for something, given our love of Big things here in Australia. If the Foxtel sign had stuck around for 44 years, would opinions have changed? Would it have worked its way into our hearts, to the point that the general public would’ve been happy to pay to have it maintained? Would people view it with the warmth of nostalgia, and speak of it fondly like an old friend? Why is Nylex better than Foxtel?

Incidentally, the Foxtel sign was the largest sign in the Southern Hemisphere, and so bright that at night it lit up the rooms of the houses opposite it like day time. A friend of mine who worked for Foxtel told me that the residents took the company to court over the sign and its nova-like brightness. Telstra eventually came to an out-of-court settlement where they supplied every affected home with new, extra thick curtains! Creative thinking.

So Foxtel didn't last but Nylex is still there. Maybe it's because Nylex is representative of our inner suburban, working class roots? It represents all the factory workers who lived and toiled in Richmond before it became fashionable and expensive? The sign doesn't represent a company and its products, but a local narrative of hard work and hard conditions. Could be; it's not a history I can say I know much about.