Born in Uruguay in 1872, he died in the UK in 1944. A medical doctor, he taught all his life at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and at the Royal College of Art in London. From 1910-1930, he designed fonts for the Cranach-Presse in Weimar, which was owned by Count Harry Kessler.

In 1916, he makes a typeface for the London Underground (helped by Eric Gill). Johnston's London Transport type is reworked by Colin Banks in his New Johnston (1979). His fonts show a strong influence by Eric Gill: Hamlet-Type (1912-27, designed for a Shakespeare edition, Cranach Press, 1929), Imprint-Antiqua (with Gerard Meynell and J. H. Mason, 1913; +Imprint Shadow; digital forms exist at Monotype [Imprint MT], URW [Imprint URW, preferred over the MT version by some of my correspondents], SoftMaker [I771], and Bitstream [Dutch 766]), Johnston Sans Serif (1916).

A version of the London Underground typeface (1997) was digitized by P22 foundry. In 2007, P22 extended that typeface to a 21-style multilingual collection called P22 Underground Pro. At ITC, Dave Farey and Richard Dawson recreated a Johnston sans serif family with 3 weights, aptly called ITC Johnston. Nick Curtis created Underground NF in 1999. Many other designers aped Johnston's Underground as well. Hamlet, the almost-blackletter script, was revived by Manfred Klein and Petra Heidorn as HamletOrNot. In 2012, Greg Fleming published Railway Sans as a free open source font at OFL. It is based upon Johnston's original drawings and work started by Justin Howes just before his death.

Edward Johnston is a book published by Priscilla Johnston (London, 1959). Author of Writing&illuminating,&lettering (1917, J. Hogg, London; original done in 1906). Writing Illuminating Lettering at Amazon.

Scans of some lettering by him: illuminations (1917), modernized half uncial (1906), Calligraphy by Johnston. Digital fonts based on alphabets from the 1906 book include Edward's Uncial 1904 (2011, David Kettlewell).

Links: Linotype, FontShop, Klingspor link.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Edward Johnston
 [Designer info]
Google search page

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Uruguayan type design ⦿ Books on type design ⦿ Arts and Crafts Movement ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Uncial typefaces ⦿

Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html