List of public signage typefaces
 | This list needs additional citations for verification. (November 2008) |
This is a list of typefaces used for signage in public areas, such as roads and airports:
| Typeface | Used by | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Achemine (Article for font is in French) | SNCF, France | Created in 2008 to improve station accessibility. |
| Alfabeto Normale and Alfabeto Stretto | Italy | Alfabeto Normale ("Normal Alphabet") is a bolder variant of the British Transport typeface.[1] Alfabeto Stretto ("Narrow Alphabet") is a condensed version of Alfabeto Normale, and is used for long names that wouldn't fit otherwise. The typeface Traffic type Spain D,[2] used in Spain, is identical to Alfabeto Normale. |
| Antique Olive | California Department of Transportation | Some regulatory Signs |
| Arial | Used for mentioning line alerts on the D.C. Metro
Station signage on the Warsaw Metro Some regulatory signs Bengaluru Metro (Namma Metro) PIDS |
|
| Austria | Austria | road typeface, is being phased out since 2013 |
| Bembo | Smithsonian signage in Washington D.C. | |
| Brusseline | Brussels' public transport company | |
| Calvert | Tyne & Wear Metro, United Kingdom | |
| Caractères | France | Used for road signs in France and in some countries in Africa. |
| Carretera | General Directorate of Highways Road signs in Spain |
Proprietary typeface commissioned for this purpose, used on intracity road signs. Highway Gothic and Arial is used on intercity and highway signs instead. |
| Casey | Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation | |
| Clarendon | U.S. National Park Service road signs[3] | |
| Clearview | Destination signs of Quebec autoroutes (shields are in Highway Gothic)
Indonesia |
Developed to replace U.S. FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) typefaces[3] |
| Deutsche Bahn WLS | Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) station signage[4] | Developed in close reference to Helvetica |
| DIN 1451 | German transport typeface Czech road signs Road signs in Singapore Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Bengaluru Metro (Namma Metro) Signage |
Also used in the Greek motorway network
|
| Drogowskaz | the Polish transport typeface | one of a few digitalisations; officially the typeface used in Polish road signs has no defined name |
| Dupla | Manila International Airport, Manila, Philippines | replacement for Helvetica on airport signage |
| Esseltub | previously used in Stockholm Metro | |
| Eurostile | California Department of Transportation | Some regulatory signs |
| FIP signage typeface | Government of Canada | A modified version of Helvetica Medium used by the Government of Canada[5] |
| FF Fago | ADIF | Used as official font for signage system of all Spanish railway stations owned by the state-owned administrator, ADIF. |
| FF Meta | Stockholm Metro, California Department of Transportation, Birmingham Airport | Some mile marker signs. |
| FF Transit | Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe[6] | Developed by MetaDesign for Berlin's public transport company BVG and later adopted by other transport systems. Especially designed for use in public transportation, contains a lot of pictograms for public signage. Based on Frutiger.[6] |
| Freight Sans | Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru, India | |
| Frutiger | Swiss road signs Amtrak Across the public transport network of Oslo, Norway Dutch National Railways |
|
| FHWA Series fonts – sometimes called Highway Gothic.[3] | United States | Developed for U.S. road signage, and also used in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Turkey. |
| Futura BSK | Italian railways[10] | |
| Giaothong1 and Giaothong2[11] | Vietnam | Modification of DIN 1451 typeface with Vietnamese extension |
| Gill Sans | British Railways until 1965 Transperth |
Also the official font for all the signage system of the Spanish Government. |
| Goudy Old Style | Used on Public Transport Corporation railway station signs in the 1990s, replacing the green The Met signs. | The blue Metlink signs replaced these signs in 2003 after a short trial of Connex signs (using Verdana) at Mitcham and Rosanna stations. |
| Helvetica | New York City Subway system Road signs in Cambodia Chicago Transit Authority system Fort Lauderdale International Airport Signage |
Formerly used on Hong Kong's MTR, Stockholm Metro, portions of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's system, and Melbourne's The Met, has also been used on some Toronto subway station signage. Less commonly, the typeface has been used on street signs in the United States, most notably in some suburbs of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, parts of Pennsylvania, and Contra Costa County Transportation Authority. Was also used for English-language text by the Shutoko expressways system between circa 1989-2010. Previously used on road signs in Japan, South Korea, and Sri Lanka. |
| Helvetica Neue | Being phased out on the Victorian public transport network in favour of Network Sans, but still commonly seen. | |
| Hiragino | East Nippon Expressway Co., Ltd. (NEXCO East Japan), Central Nippon Expressway Co., Ltd. (NEXCO Central Japan), and West Nippon Expressway Co., Ltd. (NEXCO West Japan) | Japan Highway Public Corporation (decided into three NEXCO group companies in 2005) had used its own Japan Highway Public Corporation Standard Text until 2010. Since 2010, Hiragino is used for main Japanese text, and Frutiger for numbers and Vialog for English text.[12] |
| Johnston | Transport for London
Some Citybus and New World First Bus route displays in Hong Kong | |
| LLM Lettering | Used for road signs in Malaysia. | |
| LTA Identity Typeface | Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit[13] | |
| Metrolis | Lisbon Metro | Custom font for the 1995 rebranding, designed by the Foundry (Freda Sack and David Quay) |
| Metron | Prague Metro | Created in 1973 forby Jiří Rathouský |
| Moscow Sans | Public transport and wayfinding in Moscow, Russia since 2015 | Custom font family by Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel (A2-TYPE) in collaboration with Ilya Ruderman (CSTM Fonts) |
| Motorway | Motorway route numbers in the United Kingdom and Ireland | |
| Myriad | Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway
Signage on the Bengaluru Metro (Namma Metro) |
|
| Network Sans[14] | Transport for Victoria, Public Transport Victoria | Replaces Helvetica Neue |
| New Frank | Transport for New South Wales, Australia | Used for all transport signage around Sydney and New South Wales. |
| News Gothic | NYC Subway (Mid 20th Century) | Used on the NYC Subway in the mid 20th century |
| Nimbus Sans | Used for Digital PIDS on the DC Metro | |
| NPS Rawlinson | United States National Park Service | Developed as a replacement for Clarendon[3] |
| NR Brunel | Network Rail railway stations in the United Kingdom | |
| Parisine | Paris Métro Osaka Metro |
|
| Pragmatica | Saint Petersburg Metro since 2002; | currently (2010–11) is being replaced by Freeset, Cyrillic variation of Frutiger |
| Rail Alphabet | British Rail, British Airports Authority, DSB, NHS | Designed for British Rail in 1964. Still in use on parts of the UK rail network, but mostly superseded elsewhere. |
| Rodoviária | Road signs in Portugal prior to 1998 | Typeface closely identical to Plaak, combined with FHWA Series E. |
| Rotis Semi Sans | Metro Bilbao | used by its own creator, Otl Aicher, for the corporate design of Metro Bilbao |
| Rotis Semi Serif | Station signs of Sound Transit[15] | |
| Rotis Serif | Street signposts in Singapore | |
| Ruta CL | Chilean roads.[16] | |
| Seoul Type | Seoul Metropolitan Government | Developed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2008 for usage in official Seoul Metropolitan Government documents and institutions, signage and public transport within Seoul. The structure was designed to resemble the gradual curves of a traditional hanok roof. |
| Sispos and Sisneg | Sweden | Designed by Bo Berndal – old Swedish standard (SIS 030011, 1973) for public road signs, displays, etc. |
| SNV | Belgium, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Romania, Countries of the former Yugoslavia Switzerland until 2003 |
Used on road signs in several European countries |
| Standard (also known as Akzidenz-Grotesk) | New York City subway signs | Sometimes seen on older New York City subway signs. Was sometimes used in place of Helvetica.[17]
|
| Sweden Sans | Swedish Government | Commissioned by the Swedish government, and designed by Stefan Hattenbach with the partnership of Stockholm-based design agency Söderhavet, designed to represent "Swedishness" both abroad and at home, and aims to become default in official sites in Sweden.[18] |
| TERN (Trans-European Road Network) | Austria, Slovakia | Developed by the International Institute for Information Design with the aim of unifying the road signage in all of the European Union. |
| Times New Roman | Station signage for MARTA | |
| Toronto Subway (typeface) | Toronto Transit Commission | Used in maps, publications, and most stations of the Toronto subway |
| Trafikkalfabetet ("The traffic alphabet") | Norway | Used for Norwegian road signs and (until 2002) motor vehicle registration plates |
| Transport | British roads
Vast Majority of European road signage |
Also used in Portugal, Greece and other countries |
| Tratex | Road signs in Sweden | |
| TS Info and TS Mapa | Transantiago | Created by the DET (Departamento de Estudios Tipográficos, Universidad Católica de Chile) for the Transantiago, the public transport network in Santiago de Chile. |
| Univers | Montreal Metro Hong Kong International Airport Bay Area Rapid Transit |
Also used for the Walt Disney World Resort road system (route numbers are in Highway Gothic). Formerly used on the destination rolls of Comeng trains in Melbourne, Australia prior to refurbishment (converted to dot-matrix displays), as well as Hitachi trains which had their original destination rolls replaced in the 1980s with the Comeng type. |
| Vejtavleskrift ("Road sign typeface") | Road signs in Denmark[19] | |
| Verdana | Used for road signs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary | |
| Vialog | Renfe, directional signs on Japanese expressways | Used in signage and all corporative communications of the state-owned Spanish Railway Operator in a custom-made variant called Renfe Vialog. |
| Wayfinding Sans | Metro Rio El Dorado International Airport Santa Cruz Indonesian Railway Company |
Used in signage for Rio de Janeiro's metro system Metro Rio, El Dorado International Airport, the city of Santa Cruz, California and Indonesian Railway Company. |
See also
- Typefaces used on North American traffic signs
- Road signs in the United Kingdom
- Download of fonts used on roadsigns
References
- ^ Traffic Sign Typefaces: Italy http://opentype.info/blog/2009/02/09/traffic-sign-typefaces-italy/
- ^ "Traffic Type Spain D - Desktop font « MyFonts". Myfonts.com. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2012-11-09.
- ^ a b c d Joshua Yaffa (August 12, 2007). "The Road to Clarity". The New York Times.
- ^ "Schrift in der Wegeleitung" [Fontface in route guidance]. Deutsche Bahn AG Marketingportal (in German). Retrieved 2018-02-19.
- ^ "4.5 Signage Typeface." FIP Manual. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, n.d. Web. 17 August 2011. <http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/fip-pcim/man_4_5-eng.asp>.
- ^ a b "FF Transit fonts from the FontFont Library". www.fontfont.com. Retrieved 2018-02-19.
- ^ "Handbuch VBB-Richtlinien Fahrgastinformation" [VBB guideline for passenger information] (PDF) (in German). Verkehrsverbund Berlin Brandenburg. November 2017. Retrieved 2018-02-19.
- ^ "The STM rolls out new signage in métro stations". Société de transport de Montréal. Retrieved 2018-02-19.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 2010-10-18.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Archived copy" (in Italian). Archived from the original on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2009-10-09.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ According to National Technical Regulation on Expressway Guidance Signs (http://mt.gov.vn/Images/FileVanBan/_TT27-BGTVT.signed.pdf). Retrieved 2018-09-09.
- ^ East Nippon Expressway Co., Ltd. (NEXCO East Japan), Central Nippon Expressway Co., Ltd. (NEXCO Central Japan), and West Nippon Expressway Co., Ltd. (NEXCO West Japan)「より視認し易い高速道路案内標識を目指した 標識レイアウトの変更について」[1]
- ^ http://mic-ro.com/metro/files/LTAFont.pdf
- ^ "PTV Network Sans Typeface". The Dots. Retrieved 2019-02-17.
- ^ Two Twelve Harakawa Inc.; Maestri Design Inc.; Jon Bentz Design (September 2004). "Typography" (PDF). System-Wide Signage Design Manual, Second Edition. Sound Transit. p. DS-17. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 13, 2010. Retrieved October 18, 2014.
- ^ "Manual de Señalización de Tránsito - Conaset". CONASET, Ministerioa de Transporter Telecomunicaciones. Feb 2015.
- ^ "The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway". AIGA. 2008-11-18. Retrieved 2012-11-09.
- ^ http://soderhavet.com/nyheter/sverige-har-fatt-ett-eget-typsnitt/ (in Italian)
- ^ http://www.trafikken.dk/wimpdoc.asp?page=document&objno=123041 (in Danish) Q&A by the Danish road authority Archived November 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine