Monday 9 November 2009

Public signage typefaces

I'm reading Joe Moran's book On Roads at the moment, which contains a fascinating account of how the Transport typeface and mixed-case lettering came to be used on British road signs. Wikipedia maintains a very fine collection of functional sanserif fonts, with an interesting list of those that have been used on public signs.

Transport: British road signs




Rail Alphabet: also used in some hospitals!




Johnston: in 2008 TfL removed the serif from the number '1'



Frutiger: according to Wikipedia, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol uses Frutiger as its main font for house style and signage.



Clearview: the new typeface on the US road sign scene



All of these images are in the public domain apart from Rail Alphabet, which has attribution and copyright info here