Highway Gothic and Other Iconic Typefaces

The font most commonly used on road signs and highways in Canada and the U.S. is FHWA Series E Modified. This is a sans-serif font informally called Highway Gothic. 

"FHWA" refers to the Federal Highway Administration. "Series E" refers to one of the variations of fonts (the differences are mainly thickness, width and horizontal spacing of the characters) and "modified" refers again to the thickness and width of each character.

FHWA was developed in WWII by the Public Roads Administration to "maximize legibility at a distance and at high speed" and hasn't changed much since then. Australia, Mexico, Spain and Peru also use the FHWA font series. Newer highways in China have begun adopting it as well.

Over the next few decades, the new Clearview typeface, also specifically developed for traffic signs by an independent design firm, is expected to gradually replace the FHWA series. 

Clearview is slightly more rounded and thicker. Speculation has it the new font is being implemented to help a growing demographic of elderly drivers. Here's a side by side comparison:

Interstate Highway Markers (FHWA Typeface)
Interstate Highway Markers (Clearview)

Tourist destinations often eschew the standard font in favor of something more beautiful. Lunenburg's is the best one I've ever seen:

Designed in 1965 on a variation of the serif typeface Baskerville, Canada's wordmark (essentially the government's logo) is timeless, fresh and still extremely popular:  

The Federal Government has installed 5,337 of these signs across the Canada over the past few years to keep citizens informed about the strategies in place to cope with the recession:

B.C.'s signs were painted in the U.S., which caused a media furor. Transportation minister Shirley Bond defended the decision by explaining that "there is a competitive bidding process and sometimes we go outside Canada...that is part of the process of finding the best value for dollars."

Lastly, these yellow and brown Parks Canada signs make me extremely nostalgic for the 80's and summers of camping as a child:

AdHoles Blog has a great post about "Summer Fonts" here.

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Posted by Megan Power in Canada wordmark, economic action plan signs, fonts, highway signage, logos, TransCanada, typefaces

Highway Gothic and Other Iconic Typefaces

The Art of Typography

Print is a "visual homogenizing of experience", declared Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, and he went on to argue that the printing press made it possible for democracy, nationalism and capitalism to develop. Print gives us a collective identity, as opposed to the fragmented, oral cultures of long ago.

Typography is not merely decorative but pivotal - especially in the electronic age - in how a reader perceives what they're reading. Type affects the reader's eye by creating a mood, by making words readable, coherent and visually satisfying.

In this post from his NYT blog, Canadian author Douglas Coupland talks about experimenting with type in his novels and proclaims his love for the font Helvetica. "It was designed to be 100-percent emotionally neutral," he writes. An indie documentary about the font was even made in 2007.

This WSJ article takes a fascinating look at the much-hated Comic Sans font and talks about a woman who broke up with her boyfriend in a typewritten letter using Comic Sans to soften the blow. 

UK airports and tube stations use a font called New Johnston, a variant of the original commissioned by London Transport in 1913:

Let's come back to this in a moment. Can you spot what's wrong with the typefaces below?

As Designshack.co.uk points out, "there is a major disconnect between the visual personality of the font selections and the words written with them. You would almost never see the world’s leading ultimate fighting champion exclaimed in a pretty script font."

Consciously we don't think about the relationship between words and type but it does exist and is a powerful influence.

I perceive New Johnston (the tube sign font above) as sensible, clear and easy to follow - just like I want my experience with mass transportation to be. The font communicates reassurance.

Type is often called "visual poetry" because, like a poem, it is meant to convey a feeling.

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Posted by Megan Power in fonts, typography, typsetting

The Art of Typography