As our Summer Quarter transportation studio progresses, we at LWC took the time to look into some fonts commonly used in transportation signage and general wayfinding. Many of these fonts are commercial fonts, but we’ve included a few free ones as well. Before you fall back on the old standbys of Helvetica and Myriad Pro, here are a few fonts favored by wayfinding designers and the histories behind them.
Commercial Fonts
DIN
DIN, an acronym for the German Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization), and the name of an increasingly large realist sans-serif typeface family. In 1936 the German Standard Committee selected DIN 1451 as the standard typeface for use in the areas of engineering, technology, traffic, administration and business. Among the other recommendations adopted by this committee was an early precursor to the typographic grid.The earliest version of a DIN typeface was released by the D Stempel AG foundry in 1923. Stempel’s design was applied mostly to schematics and blueprints. In 1929, the Berthold foundry released a version, and it, too, was used mostly for technical drawings. It remained in use for German number plates until 2000.Linotype markets a digital version of the original font while Albert-Jan Pool created a very versatile family of DIN typefaces (FF DIN) for Fontshop. FF DIN is more geared towards commercial applications.
More information about DIN can be found at:
DINfont.com
PrePressure
Frutiger
When Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger was commissioned in 1968 to create a new directional system for the newly build Charles De Gaulle International Airport, his goal was to create a sans serif typeface with the rationality and cleanliness of Univers, but with the organic and proportional aspects of Gill Sans. The result of his inspiration was a highly legible typeface with letter properties The letter properties were suited to the needs of Charles De Gaulle – modern appearance and legibility at various angles, sizes, and distances. Ascenders and descenders are very prominent, and apertures are wide to easily distinguish letters from each other. It has been used across the public transport network in Oslo, Norway since the 1980s and has also been used in the National Health Service in England, Telefónica O2, the British Royal Navy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and road signs in Switzerland.
Get the Frutiger Font Family at LinoType.com
More information about Frutiger can be found at:
PrePressure
Wikipedia
Gill Sans
Occasionally referred to as the “Helvetica of England”, Gill Sans achieved national prominence almost immediately after it’s release in 1928 when it was to become the standard typeface for the LNER railway system, soon appearing on every facet of the company’s identity, from locomotive nameplates and station signage to restaurant car menus, printed timetables and advertising posters. When British Railways was created in 1948, Gill Sans was used in much of its printed output. Gill Sans continues to thrive to this day, often being held to bring an artistic or cultural sensibility to an organization’s corporate style. Prominent users include the BBC, which adopted the typeface as its corporate typeface in 1997. The British Government formally adopted Gill Sans as its standard typeface for use in all communications and logos in 2003.
Get the Gill Sans font family at Linotype.com
More information about Gill Sans can be found at:
PrePressure : Interesting Fonts – Gill Sans
Wikipedia
Helvetica Neue
Used by New York Citys Metropolital Transportation Authority, Chicago Transit Authority, British Aiports Authority, Danish railway company, Metro” (Underground) in Madrid, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. It is a popular choice for commercial wordmarks, including those for 3M, American Airlines, Helvetica is widely used by the U.S. government; such as the US federal income tax forms.
Get Helvetica Neue at MyFonts.com
More information about Helvetica can be found at:
Helvetica Film
Helvetica vs. Arial
Wikipedia
Interstate
Based on the signage alphabets of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Interstate is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones and licensed by Font Bureau. Even though it’s intended use was for signage, Interstate is also suitable for text setting in print and on-screen, and has gained popularity as such in the 90s. Due to its wide spacing it is best suited for display usage in print.
Get Interstate at the Font Bureau
More information about Interstate can be found at:
Wikipedia
Scala Sans
FF Scala Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed in by Dutch designer Martin Majoor in 1993 for the Vredenburg Music Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It was designed as a companion to Majoor’s earlier serif old style typeface FF Scala, designed in 1990.
Get ScalaSans at Font Shop
More information about Scala Sans can be found at:
Wikipedia
Typedia
Whitney
When New York’s Whitney Museum asked Tobias Frere-Jones to develop an institutional typeface, they gave him two key deliverables that Tobias Frere-Jones had to deliver to the Whitney Museum: combined flexibility for editorial requirements whilst institutional integrity for the Whitney Museum’s public signage. The result was Whitney HTF, a font commonly used in signage- including LWC’s own Turner Building.
Get Whitney HTF at Typography.com
More information about Whitney HTF can be found at:
Wikipedia
Typedia
Free Fonts
Junction
“Inspired by my favorite humanist sans serif typefaces, such as Meta, Myriad, and Scala, Junction is where the best qualities of serif and sans serif typefaces come together. It has the hand drawn and human qualities of a serif, and still retains the clarity and efficiencies of a sans serif typeface. It combines the best of both worlds.”
-League of Movable Type
Download Junction at the League of Movable Type
Flaminia Type System
Not necessarily a font per se, but “Flaminia is a 2008 opensource project started as a Master Degree Thesis by Andrea Bergamini, an Italian graphic designer annoyed by the chaotic and poorly designed road signage system in his country…The leading idea was that tests taken in real-life conditions are the only way to validate the design of a font to be used for signage and that the final solution should always come from all of the modifications derived by those experiments.”
-League of Movable Type
Download Flaminia at the League of Movable Type
The samples shown are offered for typeface preview purposes only.
Tags: Inspiration, Legibility, Simplicity, Transportation, Typography