27 TTC Fonts

Nick Shinn ran an interesting project in his 2009 class at Humber College in Toronto. In the 1950s, Toronto built a subway system [which is run by the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission], with comprehensively modernist architecture. As part of the program, a geometric, all-caps typeface was designed (anonymously), for use in signage [read Joe Clark's article about the type and its history]. Nick Shinn's course began with digitizing the original drawings, to introduce the technicalities of font production in FontLab, and then proceeded with students producing their own designs for a matching lower case. The 27 students each produced a typeface. The results are here: Alex Plociennik, Andrea Luis, Andrew Clanahan, Andrew Hodge, Chris Bacchus, Cornelius Quiring, Craig Steffan, Daniel Marcus, Dan Mitchell, Danny Wu, Darren Ray, David Spindler, Gurchan Birdi, Jackie Saik, Joe Beausoleil, Katie Short, Mag Ciemiega, Michael Cirillo, Michael Lao, Michael Neto, Nick Seeger, Nik Firka, Orlena Chan, Piotr Dymura, Scott Krysa, Tiffany Delve, Todd Haskins. [Google] [More]  ⦿

2D Typo
[Lukyan Turetskyy]

Lviv-based Ukrainian designer (b. 1979) of the octagonal stencil face Depot Trapharet (2006, brutalist), and of the free car rallye dingbat face Rallye Symbols (2008). Dafont link.

In 2010, he went commercial as 2D Typo. The first typeface at 2D typo was the modular pixelish Pressure Drop 2D (2010). This was followed by Ornamental Deco 2D (2010, art deco ornaments), Rally Symbols 2D (2010), Mascaron2D (2010, by Iryna Korchuk), Depot Trapharet 2d (2010, a stencil based on the tram lettering in Lviv), Ascetic 2D (2005-2010), Hutsulyandiya (2010, extraordinary ornaments by Iryna Korchuk), Simeon (2010, calligraphic), Cranked Pipe 2D (2011), Tripyllia 2D (2011, ornaments of the neolithic Trypillya culture), and Ukrainian Barokko (2010, a calligraphic face by Genadij Zarechnjuk), Historism Border (2011, border ornaments).

Behance link. Klingspor link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

A2 Type
[Henrik Kubel]

A2-Type (or simply, A2) is a type foundry set up in the autumn of 2010 by the London based design studio A2/SW/HK. The designers are Henrik Kubel and Scott Williams. A2's bespoke type design is mainly the responsibility of Henrik Kubel, though every typeface is developed and approved by both partners. Kubel is self-taught, making his first typefaces while studying at Denmark's Design School from 1992-97. Their typefaces:

• 4590
• 60 Display.
• Antwerp (2011). A readable text family designed by Kubel during an Expert Type Design Class in 2011 at Plantin Genootschap in Antwerp.
• A2 Archi (2005, Henrik Kubel): an octagonal face.
• A2 Aveny-T (2000, Henrik Kubel): Poster typeface commissioned as aprt of the identity of the Aveny-T theatre in Copenhagen.
• Agriculture.
• Archi.
• Banknote.
• A2 Battersea (1999, Henrik Kubel): inspired by Meta, DIN and Transport Alphabet. Bauhouse.
• A2 Beckett (2008). A condensed sans family with the masculinity of Impact.
• Boing.
• Copenhagen
• A2 CPH Tram (2009, Henrik Kubel): revival of an odd mini-serifed type found on the exterior of Danish trams, ca. 1920.
• A2 CWM (2008, Henrik Kubel): constructivist type designed for the headlines and cover of Cold War Modern Design 1945-1970.
• Dane.
• A2 Danmark (2008, Henrik Kubel): a display stencil family.
• A2 Ergonomics (2011).
• Flavin Medium.
• A2 Flowers (2005, Henrik Kubel): arrows, fists, flourishes, ornaments.
• A2 FM: slab serif family.
• A2 Grot 10 (2009, Henrik Kubel): a take on the Grot Series by Stephenson Blake.
• A2 Impacto (2005, Henrik Kubel): Impact?
• A2 Klampenborg (1997, Henrik Kubel): industrial style sans.
• Kunstuff.
• London (2010).
• Magna.
• Maximum.
• A2 Monday (2003, Henrik Kubel): based on 19th century English vernacular serif signage type.
• Naive.
• New Rail Alphabet (2009). A refreshed and expanded version of Margaret Calvert's alphabet from the 1960s which saw nationwide use with British Rail, BAA, and the NHS. Developed in cooperation with Calvert.
• Nosferato.
• Ole.
• Outsiders Light.
• Parsons Green Medium.
• Square.
• Staton.
• Tagstyle.
• Test.
• Triumph.
• A2 Typewriter (2000, Henrik Kubel): based on Olivetti Typewriter 22.
• A2 Vogue Floral: a fashion mag modern display face in two styles.
• Vogue Paris.Granshan 09 Type Design Competition. 1st Prize, Display fonts.
• A2 Zadie (2005, Henrik Kubel): inspired by Edwardian railings surrounding the Royal Army Military College in London. Used on the cover of the Zadie Smith bestseller On Beauty (2005, Penguin Press, NY). Granshan 10 Type Design Competition. 3rd Prize, Display fontt described as an ornamental blackboard bold type.

Klingspor link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Abandoned Mine Land Program
[Neffra Matthews]

Geographic symbol fonts in truetype: BLMSymbols, BLM Mine Symbols, BLMMine2, BLMSYM1, Blmsym2 (all with symbols for abandoned mines), International2, Paleo (paleontology symbol set by Neffra Matthews of NARSC), USDAFS (another nice international symbol set, by the Forest Service). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Aghava.ru

Travel symbol font archive: Trains, Transportation, TransportMT. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Anke Art
[Anke Arnold]

Wernau (was: Wendlingen), Germany-based Anke Arnold's free fonts: aa Halftone (2012: texture face), aa Tafelschrift (2012, school font), Car Go Frame (2011), Car-Go Plain (2011, modeled after German license plate lettering), Typo Garden (2010, alphadings), 80er Teenie Demo (2009), Acki Preschool (2009), Just Another Stamp (2009), Firlefanz (2009, curly letters), Pixelstitch (2006), AnkeHand (2003), Hole-Hearted (2003, Gill Sans with hearts), KRITZEL (scratchy pen), MilkyWay, FrightNight, Eminenz (2002), Scribble, Skribus, Why, TooLazyToPractice, XXX, CheapInkkilledmyPrinter, Storch (alphadings), Alexandras-Stempelkasten, Anatevka-Caps, BulletMix, Catwalk, Duke, Dukeplus (2000, blackletter), Riddleprint, Anke-Print, AnkeCalligraph, Titanic, Wasser, butterbrotpapier, distracted-musician, dyslexic, manko, quixotic, verrutscht, zladdi, barcoded, BulletMix2, CAR-GO-2, Fortunaschwein (nice curly script; no punctuation or numbers), Round, BigBrothers&Sisters, BoringLesson, CrimesceneAfterimage, Incognitype (old typewriter), Jenna'sPopsicles, Japanese Brush (1996), Knuffig (2000), MonkyBusiness, Olympia2000, Samba, Dandelion, Kritzel (2003, scratchy hand), Krystal (2000, snow simulation face), Nervous, ParryHotter (2001, a Harry Potter blackletter face), Pffft, Tschiroki, Heart2Heart (heart alphadings), Anke Sans.

English page. For 10DM (5 USD), Anke will make your handwriting into a font! Alternate URL. Dafont link. Another link. Open Font Library link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Anna Giedrys

Freelance graphic designer from Poland. She studied graphic design and visual communication at the University of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland (Sign and Typography Studio), and graduated as a Master of Arts. Currently freelances for several design studios. In 2011, she designed the playful rounded Signika for pedestrian signage. Pic. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Annik Troxler

Swiss-born type designer Annik Troxler created the travel dingbat font Traffic (2002, Niklaus Troxler). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Aparat
[Domen Fras]

Aparat is Domen Fras's commercial foundry in Ljubljana, Slovenia. His largely experimental work:

• Brutildo (2006): squarish headline lettering.
• Butalci (1998, a pixel font) is a part of Domen's diploma project at Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, supervised by Janez Suhadolc.
• Gyro (1998-2001) is an octagonal monospace font with 3 weights.
• Exlibris (2001-2003) is an experimental face.
• Pozor (1999) is a squarish sans, as for traffic signage.
• Terragni (1998) is an alphabet study based on the floor plan composition analysis of the house 'Casa del Fascio' in Como by the architecta Giuseppe Terragni.
• DinoUnicase (1997) is a variation on DIN Mittelschrift.
• Narod (2003) was made for designing commemorative coins at 60th anniversary of Kocevje Summit.
• JH Luzern (1999) is based on a scan of a hotel room card.
• Pesjan Debu (2011) is a fat angular poster face created during TipoBrda 2011.
• Narod Krepak (2010) is an art deco sans titling face created during TipoBrda 2010000000

Arcada.com
[Victor Kisel]

The zip file contains map dingbat fonts: BP (by Victor Kisel, 1999), ESRICartography, ESRIEnvironmentalIcons, ESRIGeometricSymbols, ESRIOilGasWater, ESRIWeather, ESRITransportationMunicipal, ESRIGeology, ESRICrimeAnalysis, MapInfoArrows, MapInfoCartographic, MapInfoMiscellaneous, MapInfoOil&Gas, MapInfoSymbols, MapInfoRealEstate, MapInfoTransportation, MapInfoWeather. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Arc--Info and ArcView Symbol Sets

Brian T. Sheahan's information page on symbol sets. Contains a few truetype symbol fonts, such as Recreate, Roadsym (by Tim Loesch, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources), Abandoned Mine Land Symbol Set (truetype), Military Symbol Fonts (by the S2 company), a truetype geology font (by he British Columbia Geological Survey Branch), the geologic map symbols from the U.S. Geological Survey. Recreate.ttf, alternate site. [Google] [More]  ⦿

astype.de
[Andreas Seidel]

Astype.de is a German foundry started in 2003 by illustrator and type designer Andreas Seidel (b. 1975). He lives in Cottbus, Germany. Home page. See also here. In 2007, he and Ingo Preuss set up The German Type Foundry. The typefaces:

• One of his first typefaces was Crayfish (originally a URW font, but withdrawn by Seidel from URW in 2002). Crayfish is a display type originally designed for an American Football club. The Crayfish faces are sold as Thunder Bold and Titan Bold.
• Check his nice weather symbols (not a font).
• He finished Ornaments Thanksgiving and the great ASTYPEOrnaments-WineGrape A (2004).
• He is working on 14th century initials (2003).
• He created Sattler (2003): Joseph Kaspar Sattler, one of the great German art nouveau artists created these nice initials in 1897 for the famous royal monumental book project Die Nibelunge for the Reichsdruckerei Berlin. Only 200 exclusive signed masterpieces were printed in four years from 1900 till 1904. Joseph Sattler was the art director, type designer and designer in one person. The Reichsdruckerei showed samples of the unfinished work in 1900 at the world exhibition in Paris to advertise the high craftsmanship of the German presses.
• He made Heraut (2003), an art nouveau lettering face based on a 1901 design of Heinz Hoffmann.
• He created Sveva AS Versal (2003, art nouveau).
• About Missa Solemnis, he writes: Solemnis was designed by Günter Gerhard Lange and first cut in metal 1953 (this is the date he quotes himself, other sources mention 1950 or 1952). It seems to be one of his earliest typeface designs that he had done as a freelancer for H. Berthold AG in Berlin. [...] Missa Solemnis AS is a new, remastered and extended version of Mr Lange's typeface. The font is available in the OpenType format and comes in two styles: 1953 and 2003. The 1953 style contains all characters of the original metal type, as well as a few additions. [...] The 2003 cut is more delicate and makes extensive use of the OpenType format. It contains over 650 glyphs, covering Roman-based languages of Western and Central Europe. His Solemnis inspired Simeon AS (2003), a 650-glyph uncial style face.
• In 2004, he created Missale Incana, an interpretation of a face from Herbert Thannhaueser.
• Still in 2004, he created ASTYPE Ornaments Christmas A2 and ASTYPE Ornaments Christmas A. These were followed in 2005 by ASTYPE Ornaments Christmas B.
• He made Missale Lunea (2004, uncial). This has astroligical symbols, moon phases and medieval characters.
• In 2005, the exquisite calligraphic script face Gracia was added, consisting of Gracia No. 44, 45, 54 and 55 (graceful calligraphic script), and Gracia Solo.
• Paola is a redesigned, new interpretation of a brush typeface from Carl Rudolf Pohl.
• He made Adana (2005): The roots of Adana going back to the year 1930, to the Berlin-based German graphic designer Wilhelm Berg. His typeface can be interpreted as an answer to Lucian Bernhards Schönschrift. The Initials are nearly close to the original drawings but the Circular typeface was changed dramaticly. Excentric, unusual forms and loops were changed to fit todays needs. Due to the lack of a corresponding Roman letter form, the Regular version was designed including small caps, fitting the contrast and swinging shapes of Adana Circular. Both typefaces play well together in all kinds of adverts, as well with designs like Bodoni or Didot.
• Alea AS Initials (2005) is a floral faced based on the drawings of Maria Ballé.
• Taiko (2006).
• ASTYPE Ornaments Accolades A (2007), and ASTYPE Ornaments Accolades C (2011).
• GTF Toshna Std (2008, German Type Foundry) is a garaldic type family in three optical weights, after a 1955 family called Tschörtner-Antiqua by Hellmuth Tschörtner that was very popular in the DDR.
• Secca (2009, German Type Foundry) is a simple sans family rooted in early German grotesque type designs.
• Nepos (2010) is an experimental modular type kit consisting of ready-made typefaces and a set of special BUILD fonts to build your own letters and ornaments. These BUILD fonts can be used on layers with different colors and overprinting for special effects. The effects like Antiplex can be considered as kitchen tiles. There are also color inversions and stencil types.
• Secca Saloon (2011) is a versatile ornamental Western family.
• Popsil (2011) is a white-on-black handprinted poster face.
• Ademo (2011) is a classic shaded 3d caps face, based on two typefaces designed by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt that were published in 1931-1932 by Schriftguss AG.

Attica Cybernetics

The only record I have of Attica Cybernetics is that it made the dingbat font ATLAS97 Symbol 1 (also called Attica-VMAPSymbol1) in 1995. It is part of the dingbat TTF zip file on this archive. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Auburn University

Neat truetype and FONT archive with about 110 fonts, including the Microsoft fonts, and many Bitstream fonts. Includes SystemAPLSpecial and SystemVTSpecial created by Font Source Inc for McGill University. Plus Map_Symbols (MapInfo Corp, Troy, NY, 1995). Plus Monotype's BookshelfSymbol series. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Avenza Global Technologies Corp.

A free National Parks Service (NPS) font for Mac/Windows. [Google] [More]  ⦿

BCMELP Custom True Type fonts

BC Government dingbat fonts for environmental things: BCMELP Cor Symbols, BCMELP EPD Symbols, BCMELP Fisheries Symbols, BCMELP Trim Symbols, BCMELP Wildlife Symbols, BCMELP Water Symbols, Forestry Inventory Font 25. All in truetype. For related links, check the ARC/INFO Symbology at BC Environment. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Blue Ridge Adventure Software
[James A. Dockal]

James A. Dockal of Blue Ridge Adventure Software created a free geological dingbat truetype font, Geopoetry, which consists of geologic map symbols, mainly structure symbols, for use in ArcView GIS. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Butterfly Clip Art collection
[Dick Pape]

Dick Pape based the following digitizations on images and typefaces found in the Butterfly Clip Art collection: Butterfly A1 Men At Work, Butterfly A1 Professions, Butterfly A2 Heads-Hats, Butterfly A3 Computer Things, Butterfly A4 Office Things, Butterfly A4 Writing Things, Butterfly A5 Cartoon Profession, Butterfly A5 Cartooners A, Butterfly A5 Cartooners B, Butterfly A5 Cartooners C, Butterfly A6 At Work, Butterfly A7 Cartoon Extras, Butterfly A8 Clip Art-A, Butterfly A8 Clip Art-B, Butterfly A8 Clip Art-C, Butterfly A8 Clip Art-D, Butterfly A8 Clip Art-E, Butterfly A9 Animals-A, Butterfly A9 Animals-B, Butterfly A9 Animals-C, Butterfly A9 Animals-D, Butterfly A9 Animals-E, Butterfly A9 Animals-F, Butterfly Alien Cartoons, Butterfly Animal Clips, Butterfly Aquatic Animals, Butterfly Astrological, Butterfly Awards&Trophys, Butterfly Background Ornaments, Butterfly Birds, Butterfly Borders A, Butterfly Borders B, Butterfly Cameras, Butterfly Car Pictures, Butterfly Car Things, Butterfly Cars, Butterfly Cartoon Animals A, Butterfly Cartoon Animals B, Butterfly Cartoon Animals C, Butterfly Cartoon Children A, Butterfly Cartoon Children B, Butterfly Cartoon People, Butterfly Cartoon Words, Butterfly Cartoons A, Butterfly Cartoons B, Butterfly Cartoons C, Butterfly Cartoons in Dress (A, B, C), Butterfly Celebrations, Butterfly Chef Duties, Butterfly Children A, Butterfly Children B, Butterfly Chinese Letters, Butterfly Christmas Decore, Butterfly Christmas People, Butterfly Clip Art Misc 1, Butterfly Clip Art Misc 2, Butterfly Clip Art Misc 3, Butterfly Clip Art Objects, Butterfly Clip Art People, Butterfly Clip Art Sketches 1, Butterfly Clip Art Sketches 2, Butterfly Clip Art Sketches 3, Butterfly Clip Objects 1, Butterfly Clip Objects 2, Butterfly Clip With Faces, Butterfly Clowns A, Butterfly Clowns B, Butterfly Coins Clip, Butterfly Cooking&Food A, Butterfly Cooking&Food B, Butterfly Cooking&Food C, Butterfly Designer Frames A, Butterfly Designer Frames B, Butterfly Designer Ornaments, Butterfly Dinosaurs&Mythicals, Butterfly Dinosaurs-Reptiles, Butterfly Domesticated Animals, Butterfly East Bunny, Butterfly Ethnic, Butterfly European Scenes A, Butterfly European Scenes B, Butterfly Extra Images, Butterfly Extra Things, Butterfly Famous Sights1, Butterfly Famous Sights2, Butterfly Famous Site Seeing, Butterfly Famous Sites, Butterfly Fasteners, Butterfly Flowers A, Butterfly Flowers B, Butterfly Flowers C, Butterfly Flowers Leaves, Butterfly Flowers People, Butterfly Flowers Trees, Butterfly Flowers Wreaths, Butterfly Flying Ships, Butterfly Food - Deserts, Butterfly Food - Drink, Butterfly Food - Meals, Butterfly Food 1, Butterfly Food 2, Butterfly Food Animals 1, Butterfly Food Animals 2, Butterfly Food Clips, Butterfly Foods 3, Butterfly Foods 4, Butterfly Framed Clips, Butterfly Frames, Butterfly Furniture, Butterfly Garden Tools, Butterfly German Street Signs A, Butterfly German Street Signs B, Butterfly German Street Signs C, Butterfly Glass Bottles, Butterfly Glasses, Butterfly Grocery Shopping, Butterfly Hand Tools, Butterfly Hands A, Butterfly Hands B, Butterfly Hands C, Butterfly Holidays A, Butterfly Holidays B, Butterfly Hunting&Fishing, Butterfly Information Signs A, Butterfly Information Signs B, Butterfly Information Signs C, Butterfly Insects, Butterfly Legs, Feet&Faces, Butterfly Love&Marriage A, Butterfly Love&Marriage B, Butterfly Mail Scenes, Butterfly Maps&Flags, Butterfly Miscellaneous Icons, Butterfly Motorcycles, Butterfly Musical Instrument, Butterfly Musicians&Instru, Butterfly New Humans, Butterfly New Years, Butterfly Old Humans, Butterfly People Clips, Butterfly Places Clips, Butterfly Planes, Butterfly Portraits - Adults, Butterfly Portraits - Aged, Butterfly Portraits - Famous, Butterfly Portraits - Men A, Butterfly Portraits - Men B, Butterfly Portraits - Mixed, Butterfly Portraits - Now, Butterfly Portraits - Old, Butterfly Portraits - Women A, Butterfly Portraits - Women B, Butterfly Racing Cars, Butterfly Recreations, Butterfly Recycling Signs A, Butterfly Recycling Signs B, Butterfly Religious Icons, Butterfly Road Signs, Butterfly Ships&Boats, Butterfly Sign Boards, Butterfly Signs A, Butterfly Signs B, Butterfly Silhouette Signs, Butterfly Sketches - Adults, Butterfly Sketches - Couples, Butterfly Sketches - Fashion, Butterfly Sketches - Women, Butterfly Small Signs, Butterfly Sorta Road Signs, Butterfly Sport Accessories, Butterfly Sport Cartoons, Butterfly Sport Dings A, Butterfly Sport Dings B, Butterfly Sport Dings C, Butterfly Sport Silhouettes, Butterfly Sports A, Butterfly Sports Actions A, Butterfly Sports Actions B, Butterfly Sports Actions C, Butterfly Sports B, Butterfly Sports C, Butterfly Sports D, Butterfly Sports E, Butterfly Star Designs A, Butterfly Star Designs B, Butterfly Star Designs C, Butterfly Street Signs A, Butterfly Street Signs B, Butterfly Street Signs C, Butterfly Time Pieces, Butterfly Tool Clips, Butterfly Trains, Butterfly Travel Images A, Butterfly Travel Images B, Butterfly Travel Images C, Butterfly Tribal, Butterfly Trucks and Other, Butterfly Trucks, Butterfly Vacations, Butterfly Vehicles, Butterfly Weapons, Butterfly Wild Animals, Butterfly Winter Sports, Butterfly Young Adults A, Butterfly Young Adults B. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Cadson Demak

Thai foundry in Bangkok (ex Cadson Demak pi), est. 2002. It originally published picture fonts designed by several designers including Anuthin Wongsunkakon, Supisa Wattanasansanee, and Pitipa Silapipat.

These included Pok Pong (2008, crazy animals---a great typeface), Planto (2008, plants), PawPack (2007, animals), POBox (2002), Gun Smith (2007, guns), Sun Burst (2007, kaleidoscopic), Arronts (2008, arrows), Cake Walk (2008, food dings), PalPack (2008), RetroTraveler (2008), Speak-Up (2008, text ropes), Road Show (2007, road sign outlines).

Fonts sold through T26 and MyFonts. Home page.

In 2009, Latin fonts were added, such as Option Sans (Anuthin Wongsunkakon: a reworking of his Coupe), Carbon Plus (Anuthin Wongsunkakon: a reworking of his Carbon of 2003 at T26), and Bangkokean (Anuthin Wongsunkakon) and Knight Sans (by Ekaluck Peanpanawate). Cadson Demak himself designed Bangkokean (2009, serif family), Carbon Plus (2009, rounded octagonal), Gun Smith (gun dingbats), Symbloc (dingbats), and Sun Burst (caleidoscope style dingbats) at T-26. In 2008, he created Robo (T-26, robot dingbats). In 2009 he made Bolder (a shadow face).

Due (2011) is a clean humanistic sans family.

New Son Gothic No1 through No 7 (2012) is a widely spaced gothic sans family. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Carl Rosenquist
[Carl Rosenquist]

Commercial US highway marker and symbol fonts for all states. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Caro Coops

CourierNewPSMT, CourierNewPS-BoldMT, CourierNewPS-BoldItalicMT, CourierNewPS-ItalicMT, FritQatNormal (the Frit series is from Elfring), FritQatBold, FritQatBold-Italic, FritQatItalic, HelmetBold (the Helmet series is from Sun), HelmetBoldItalic, HelmetCondensedBold, HelmetCondensedBoldItalic, HelmetCondensedItalic, HelmetCondensedNormal, HelmetItalic, HelmetNormal, ESRICartography, ESRIEnvironmentalIcons, ESRIOilGasWater, ESRITransportationMunicipal, ESRIWeather. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Cartographic fonts

The typophiles provide suiggestions for cartographic fonts, including Beorcana, Fedra Sans&Serif, Unimap (Miriam Roettgers), Gotham Rounded, and FF Parable. Dan Reynolds reminds everyone of some Linotype fonts that are often seen on German maps:

• Römisch
• Kursivschrift
• Venus
• Venus Egyptienne
• Topografische Zahlentafel

CARTO-SoC

The Society of Cartographers Listserv. Lots of nice messages in which the fonts used on maps are discussed. [Google] [More]  ⦿

CAT Design Wolgast
[Peter Wiegel]

Wolgast-based type designer Peter Wiegel (b. 1955) runs CAT Design Wolgast. Designer of these free fonts:

• In 2012: Fundamental Brigade (sans family), DiffiKult, Men Nefer (a Memphis lookalike), Fette Unz Fraktur (like Fette Fraktur), Mutter Krause (for the reconstruction of the 1929 silent movie "Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück", where it is used for intertitles, that where missing. The font is redrawn from the original intertitles), Youbilee (a font with laurels).
• In 2010: Alfabilder (dingbats), Gondrin (athletic lettering with a 3d effect), HelvetiaVerbundene (making Helverica into a school script?), Proletarsk (a grotesk face), Vis-à-vis (great idea--a double-storied serif face), ApolloASM (Victorian), BertholdrMainzerFraktur, Doergon-Regular (license plate font), DoergonBackshift, DoergonShift, Eureka (Victorian, ornamental face), GoeschenFraktur (1880-style Fraktur used in Sammlung Göschen books), Makushka, MakushkaKontura, MakushkaQuadriga, MakushkaSecunda, Moderne3DSchwabacher, ModerneGekippteSchwabacher, StrassburgFraktur, TGL0-16 (same as DIN 16), TGL0-17 (same as DIN 17), TGL0-17Alt, Tank (emblems of gas companies), EricaType-Bold, EricaType-BoldItalic, EricaType-Italic, EricaType-Regular (typewriter), ErikaOrmig, Fibel Vienna (2012, a high-legged sans), GreifswalderTengwar-Regular, GreifswalerDeutscheSchrift (German Schreibschrift), Midroba-Regular (a strong mechanical octagonal face), MidrobaSchatten, MMX2010 (futuristic), Präsent60, Rotunda Pommerania (blackletter), TengwarOptime, TengwarOptimeDiagon, cbe-Bold, cbe-BoldItalic, cbe-Italic, cbe.
• In 2009: 18thCenturyInitials, 18thCenturyKurrent-Regular, 18thCenturyKurrentAlternates, German writing from the 18th century), CentreClaws, CentreClawsBeam1, CentreClawsSlant, Cöntgen Kanzley Regular (blackletter), Cöntgen Kanzley Aufrecht (2009), ElficCaslin, H1N1, Loxembourg1910Shadow (an art nouveau-influenced stencil face), Luxembourg1910, VarietScala (an art deco sans family), Varietee, VarieteeArtist, VarieteeCabaret, VarieteeCascadeur, VarieteeCasino, VarieteeCirque, VarieteeColege, VarieteeConferencier, VarieteeFolies, VarieteeIkarier, VarieteeJongleur, VarieteeMirage, VarieteeRevue, VarieteeTheatre, KochFetteDeutscheSchrift (blackletter), MoradoFelt-Regular (upright connected script), MoradoMarker (2009), MoradoNib, PreussischeVI9 (DIN-like family), PreussischeVI9Linie, PreussischeVI9Schatten-Linie, PreussischeVI9Schatten, SchatternvonPreussischeVI9, Stage (art deco), Ring Matrix (dot matrix), Nathan, Amptmann Script (2009, upright connected script), Cat Shop, Blankenburg (blackletter), Murrx (arched face), Schwaben Alt (1988, bastarda), Vrango, 14LED (Regular, Phattt-Heavy, Rised-Black), 24LED (+Bright, +Grid, +Modul), DIN1451fetteBreitschrift1936-Regular, FibelNord (basic sans family with an architectural twist), FibelSued (family), PaneuropaBankette, PaneuropaCrashbarrier-Black, PaneuropaFreeway, PaneuropaHighway, PaneuropaRoad, PaneuropaStreet, PaneuropaWrongWay, Quirkus (family), RingMatrix (dot matrix family), RingMatrix3D, RingMatrixTwo, DiscipuliBritannica (connected script), GruenewaldVA-Regular (connected school script), Rudelskopfdeutsch-Aufrecht, WiegelLatein (connected school script), WiegelLateinMedium (2009), Morado, Moebius Bicolor (art deco), Elbaris (sans), ElbarisOutline, Nomitais (multiline face), RostockKaligraph, Waschkueche, WaschkuecheGrob-Ultra, WiegelKurrent (traditional German school script), WiegelKurrentMedium, XAyax, XAyaxOutline (2009), Kaufhalle (squarish), Quimbie (art deco), CasaSans-Regular, Elb-Tunnel, MeyneTextur (blackletter), Yiggivoo, TGL 31034-1 (futuristic sans), Beroga (a simple organic sans).
• Before 2009: Xayax, PreussischeIV44Ausgabe3 (2006, a severe sans), Utusi Star (1989, very condensed all-caps face), Avocado (2006, script face), CbeNormal (2006, script face), Leipzig Fraktur (+Bold) (2006), Berlin Email (2006, a condensed sans family, followed in 2009 by Berlin Email Serif), MaassslicerItalic (2006, a futuristic face made for Rudolf Maass + Partner GmbH), Powerweld (a gorgeous avant-garde face made for OPTI Pumpen und Technik GmbH), WolgastScript (2005), WolgastTwo (2006, connected script), WolgastTwoBold, ZeichenDreihundert-Regular, ZeichenHundert-Regular, ZeichenVierhundert-Regular, ZeichenZweihundert-Regular (2006, traffic dingbats), Djerba simplified (Arabic font, Computer and Technologie, Hamburg, 1995; it can be downloaded here), Titus FrakturBaltic (1998), TITUS FrakturEast Normal (1998), and TITUS FrakturWest Normal (1998) [which used to be downloadable here; these fonts were retired and the Titus name dropped; most of the glyphs made it to Schwaben Alt].

Charles Wright

The UK number plate font that came into effect in 2001 is called Charles Wright. It can be bought here from Magnum UK (Alex Duncan) for about 100 dollars in two versions, Charles Wright 2001 Mandatory, and Charles Wright 2001 Regular. The new number plate style is based on a font originally designed in 1935 by Charles Wright but with modifications to character shapes and width to improve readability. If you want a similar free font, consider UKNumberPlate by Gareth Attrill. Another free font was made by Keith Bates at K-Type in 2004, called Mandatory. Keith writes: "I've tried to ease the congestion in the middle of W and M by adding Gill-esque points, and thinned the tail of the Q - a slight improvement." Both the free and the commercial fonts are unofficial.

Old URL. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Chris' British Road Directory
[Nathaniel Porter]

Chris Marshall's web site on British roads and traffic signs. He has a subpage on fonts used on British highways. Based on these specifications, Nathaniel Porter and John Prentice (who added Greek characters, based on Greek road signs) made a set of free fonts that follow the British highway system. These include Transport Medium, Medium Greek and Heavy (the main British highway font), Motorway Permanent (for numbers on signs), Motorway Temporary (for use on temporary signs), Pavement (for painted lettering on the road surface), and VMS (an octagonal font for use in light-up panels). Erik Spiekermann blasts his implementation of Transport: A gentleman called Nathaniel Porter has digitized Transport Heavy, and it is being used by various agencies. The data is even worse than the Swedish Tratex font which must have been done by an amateur on on Ikarus system without corrections. This one here is just a raw scan. Amazingly, it works as a font. Too heavy for signs, but just shows how good font software has become if it can actually make a working font from a scan that looks like a piece of German rye bread. I suspect that this version of Transport Heavy is being used in Italy and Spain. And in Greece as well. They also made Old Road Sign Font after the road sign lettering in the UK in use before 1964. Its origins go back to 1944. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Christian Bordeaux

Swiss type designer at Fontnest who designed these fonts: Neuro (2006), Lubmin (2008). He writes: The Lubmin typeface is a product of adaption of a standard character set (by VEB Typoart, Dresden) that was applied on roadname signs in the former Democratic Republic of Germany. It is, as far as documented, a production of early Prussian standard typefaces, which were also pattern for nowadays DIN font. The type went into action in many ways: Road signs, railway and military signals and also car plates; so almost anywhere a functional, easy reproduceable type was needed. The original letters were often different from road sign to road sign, because the signpainters had a variable elaborateness in painting the letters; some shapes are much more angular than others. So it had been a way of finding a compromise in this case. Also some points were interpreted in a new way, curves had been changed a little bit to accord readability aspects; but all in all, the Lubmin type is as original as in the time of the #Iron Curtain#. His future site. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Clifford J. Vander Yacht

Designer at RailFonts, who describes himself as follows: I grew up in the '30s thru '50s within a half mile of the Pere Marquette; home, grade school, high school, college, and summer camping. In 1974 I began to model the PM. In 1963 I learned typography, so that match led to my first fonts, the PM and C&O. I suggested to Benn [Coifman, of Railfonts] he include my fonts and he sent me on the quest for more. I found, via a round about way, the drawings only a few miles away. That Nickel Plate font sparked my creativity (wild imagination). It's fun. His fonts: Atlantic (alternate), Chesapeake (alternate), Chesapeake1976 (compare to the lettering once used by Chessie System), Illinois Central (alternate), Monon, Nickel Plate Road, Railroad Roman 4 (compare to the lettering once used by C&O), Railroad Roman 5 (compare to the lettering once used by Pere Marquette), Railroad Roman 7 (compare to the lettering once used by Clinchfield), Seaboard (alternate). [Google] [More]  ⦿

CorelDraw dingbats

The CorelDraw dingbats can be found in many places. The fonts: Animals-1, Animals-2, Arrows1, Arrows2, Awards, Balloons, Borders1, Borders2, Buildings, Bullets1, Bullets2, Bullets3, Bullets-4(Japanese), Bullets-5(Korean), Business&Government, Borders1, Borders2, Boxes, Charting, Clocks, CommonBullets, Computers, Chinese-Generic1, Electronics, Festive, Food, Furniture, GeographicSymbolsNormal, Household, Hygiene, HomePlanning, HomePlanning2, Japanese-Generic1, Kidnap, Korean-Generic1, Landmarks, LandscapePlanning, Medicine, Military, MilitaryID, MorseCode, Music, MusicalSymbolsNormal, NauticalFlags, OfficePlanning, People, Plants, Science, Semaphore, Signs, Space, SportsFigures, Sports&Hobbies, Stars1, Stars2, SymbolProportionalBT-Regular, Shapes1. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini

Born in Firenze in 1969. Cofounder with Francesco Canovaro and Debora Manetti of the Italian design firm in Firenze called Studio Kmzero. He codesigned some typefaces there such as Arsenale White (2009). Targa Monospace (2002) is a sans inspired by italian vehicle registration plates. It has an handmade version (Targa Hand) that can be used for comic book lettering. MyFonts link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Cosmo Catalano

Editor of A web log of design and high drama which frequently comments on typographic matters such as web fonts (why pay for them?), traffic signs, and typeface use. He calls himself the world's toughest writer, and lives in the New England area (he graduated from Dartmouth, NH). In this piece entitled The Tell-Tale R Some Thoughts on Clearview, Cosmo writes this about the decision to start using Clearview for America's highway signs:

While I admit it's (much) easier to read, I can't say I'm exactly psyched about seeing it. There are a variety of reasons why. I suppose my gut reaction is that it no longer feels like I'm driving down a federally-funded expressway-it feels like I'm staring at ads.

While I've mentioned that Interstate has really picked up its public profile recently, Interstate isn't really the FHWA typeface. Tobias Frere-Jones got a lot of attention for Interstate because the edits he made were very subtle, yet somehow made the font tolerable for more than 12 characters at a time.

Clearview, on the other hand, was in use for advertising years before it ever appeared along the highway-most notably by megalith AT&T. I liked the old, ugly FWHA face because it was so odd and idiosyncratic. It was like watching a David Bowie in his "androgynous alien" days-no mistaking it for anything else, let alone a sweeping corporate rebranding.

FWHA's cold formlessness was also nice because it didn't encourage you to interact. One of Steve Jobs' most persistent design maxims is that products need to be anthropomorphic; it makes people want to engage with them.

Clearview is definitely more human than FHWA, but is that really a good thing? Do we really want people relating to and engaging with signage? Or do we want them to glance, comprehend, and get their eyes back on the road?

I'm also skeptical of the notion that legibility should be the only standard. Reading interstate signage-even with the old, weird FHWA face-is pretty damn easy. If you need the extra 200 feet to pick out an exit, what other details are you missing? Should you really be on the road? [Google] [More]  ⦿

Createdvoid

Student at UWE Bristol in the UK. FontStructor who made the squarish minimalist faces Litewerk, Slitewerk, and Heavywerk in 2010. About these, he says: Roughly based on the structure of the London underground designed by Harry Beck. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Dandm3
[Maarten Idema]

Dandm3 is the design place of Deirdre Idema (Irish born) and Maarten Idema. Maarten was a student at the KABK in Den Haag from 2003-2004. He designed Pam (2004), a typefaces specifically crafted for street maps, as well as the experimental face Before. Unclear if Maarten is Dutch, Irish or Kiwi. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Daniel H. Luecking

A researcher in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Arkansas, who specializes in metafont. He made the travel dingbat face "nkarta15", a correction and extension of the free metafont "karta" which in turn is of unknown origin. He also made a metapost file out of it. Download these fonts here. I took the liberty of making a tfm file with tfmpktest.pl, and from the tfm abd mf files, with the help of mftrace and t1utils, I made afm and pfb files: nkarta15 (type 1) (2008). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Dave Hansen

Maker of License Plate (2005), a free replica of Washington state's font, and also similar to font designs of other U.S. states and Canadian provinces. [Google] [More]  ⦿

David Poullard

Parisian type designer (b. 1972) who designed Métropolice (1998), Ordinatires (1999, inspired by names of Paris metro stations), Métropolitaine (2001, with Julien gineste, commissioned by the RATP in the art nouveau style of Guimard), and a face for some tramways and the RER in Paris in 2004. Bio. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Departamento de Estudios Tipograficos

Designers in Santiago de Chile of a family of typefaces, TS Mapa (2004), for the transit system in Santiago, transantiago: TSInfoOblicua, TSInfoRegular, TSMapaGruesa, TSMapaLigera, TSMapaOblicua, TSMapaParche, TSMapaRegular, TSTroncal, TSZonas. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Department of Transport, UK

Drawings made in 2004 (PDF files) for the lettering to be used on Britain's highways: TM1 Transport medium alphabet (upper case letters), TM2 Transport medium alphabet (lower case letters), TM3 Transport medium alphabet (numerals and arrows), TH1 Transport heavy alphabet (upper case letters), TH2 Transport heavy alphabet (lower case letters), TH3 Transport heavy alphabet (numerals and arrows), MW1 Motorway alphabet (permanent), MB1 Motorway alphabet (temporary). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Diana Alisandra Stoen

Born in Richmond, VA, in 1976. Cocreator of TX Signal Simplifier (2002, Typebox), a hilarious information design dingbat face. MyFonts writes: Eight designers present a set of icons that indicate the fun and fantastic world of signage. Each collaborator's solution represents a completely different interpretations on signage vernacular. The designers are Erik Adigard, Cynthia Jacquette, Akira Kobayashi, Michael Kohnke, Patricia McShane, Joachim Müller-Lancé, Jean-Benoît Lévy, Kevin Roberson, Diana Alisandra Stoen. Codesigner of H-AND-S (2006, AND) with Jean-Benoît Lévy, Sylvestre Lucia, Mike Kohnke and Joachim Müller-Lancé. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

DIN 1451

German highway, railway and industrial typeface that is based on strict specifications. Linotype writes: The abbreviation "DIN" stands for Deutsches Institut für Normung (The German Institute for Industrial Standards). In 1936, this standards committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the primary lettering style for use in the areas of technology, traffic, administration, and business. The committee chose a sans serif design because of its legibility, and because its forms are also easy to reproduce. This faces design was not foreseen to be used in advertisements or other "artistically oriented purposes," and there were disagreements about its aesthetic qualities. Nevertheless, the DIN face has been set everywhere in Germany since its adoption, especially on signs for town names and traffic directions. Over the decades, it has managed to make its way into advertisements, too, perhaps because of its ease of recognition. The contemporary font version of DIN 1451 has been adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its world-wide design reputation. Try it out today for signage, magazine layouts, book covers, or flyers. DIN 1451s industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any conceivable application. [Google] [More]  ⦿

DIN 17

One of the later specifications of the Deutsches Institut für Normung, from 1938. A typeface that follows it was made by Scangraphic, DIN 17 SB. [Google] [More]  ⦿

DIN specifications

DIN is a set of typeface norms set by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (The German Institute for Industrial Standards). In 1919, Germany had its first (Grotesk) typeface for technical drawings that followed strict norms, the DIN 16. This was followed in 1927 by DIN 1451. The latter set of raster-based specifications was developed under the guidance of Siemens engineer Ludwig Goller in 1926-1927. The DIN 1451 would be further developed and broadened over the years, leading to DIN Engschrift and DIN Mittelschrift. Various modifications led to DIN 1451 (1936), DIN 17 (1938) and the "new" DIN 16 (1934). The DIN was heavily used until the 1980s in stencils, sold by companies such as Faber-Castell, Rotring, Staedtler, and Standardgraph. Articles on DIN:

• Technik, Design und Erotik der FF-DIN-Rundschrift (2010, Jürgen Siebert).
• FF DIN Round (2010, Albert-Jan Pool).
• The book DIN 16 518 Klassifikation der Schriften Berlin: Deutschen Normenausschuß, 1964.

Doepfer Musikelektronik GMBH

BF_Symbols (communication dings, 1995), Doepfer (LED font by Doepfer Musikelektronik, 1995), Inter (Gary L. Ratay's travel dingbat font, 1991). See also here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Dutchfonts.com
[Ko Sliggers]

Ko Sliggers, b. 1952, Bloemendaal, The Netherlands, was a young designer at Studio Dumbar. After that, he became a professional cook in Rotterdam, Italy and France, switched back from food to design, producing challenging visuals at Studio Anthon Beeke and, in 2002, set up a one-man studio in Lalleweer, in the province of Groningen, called Dutchfonts. He was trained by Chris Brand at the St. Joost Academy in Breda. Ko created these commercial faces: DF Tapa (2007, irregular hand), Camino (2006, an austere sans), Ko (1997, six stencil styles), Etalage (2000), Arienne (2000), Staple Mono (monowidth typewriter family), Staple Txt (2005), Pommes (based on type cut out of potatoes; 8 styles), Daantje (dog dingbats) and Ko (1997, rough stencil). His own web site. MyFonts page, where you can buy DF-Arienne, DF-Etalage, DF-Ko, DF-Pommes, DF-Staple Mono, DF-Tapa (2007, grunge), DF-Mercat (2007, dingbats inspired by Barcelona's Ramblas), DF-Pigtail (2008, seventies-style script family), DF-Zzzz (2009), DF Camino (2009, a sans that is modeled on traffic sign sans faces), DF Stromboli (2010: It was written with a coffee spoon, acting like a broad pen, in the ashes of the Stromboli volcano right on top of a scanner. ), DF DejaVuPro (2010, an amalgam of sans faces), DF Game Over (2011, sketched face), DF Scheurze (2012, a great fat rough stencil face).

Dafont link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

eijin

A few dingbats here such as ArtsyParts-Dingbats-JL, Calendar-Normal, Cheq, ClassifiedDingbats, Electronics-Regular, Hazard-Regular, LogosCorporate-VOL1A, MiniPics, OldTimeAdDingsTwo, Panda, Pie-charts-for-maps, RoadWarningSign, RoadSign, Transport-Regular (by Magnum Software), CORPartSample, CORPartIISample (both by Grafik Solutionz, 1997), Medicine. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Emil Wojtacki

Polish designer of some free fonts: Drogowskaz (2006) mimics the typeface used on Polish traffic signs. He also made the sans face BN-67.9010-03 (2003). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Erdas Inc

Designers of the free map symbol font MapSheets (1996). [Google] [More]  ⦿

ESRI

GIS software outfit. Has many geological fonts. The ESRI fonts can be downloaded here: esri_1.ttf - ESRI Cartography (TrueType), esri_2.ttf - ESRI Environmental&Icons (TrueType), esri_3.ttf - ESRI Geometric&Symbols (TrueType), esri_4.ttf - ESRI Oil, Gas,&Water (TrueType), esri_5.ttf - ESRI Transportation&Municipal (TrueType), esri_6.ttf - ESRI Weather (TrueType), esri_7.ttf - ESRI Geology (TrueType), esri_8.ttf - ESRI Crime Analysis (TrueType). Alternate site. [Google] [More]  ⦿

ESRI fonts

ESRI fonts: ESRICrimeAnalysis, ESRICartography, ESRIEnvironmentalIcons, ESRIOilGasWater, ESRIWeather, ESRITransportationMunicipal, ESRIGeometricSymbols. Also has Svenska Kart Symboler. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Evgeniy Tarasenko

Russian FontStructor who made the ultra black counterless face Blot (2011). Home page. He also made nice Transport pictograms (2011). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Exclamat!ons

Makers of DBGeoType, a travel dingbat font (1997), Folks, GeoType, GeotypeTT, SympolsTT, WebKnobsTT, WhimsyTT. Dafont link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Exigent Information Solutions, LLC
[Dan Newsome]

Dan Newsome's Petro Symbols font for cartography. Free demo. [Google] [More]  ⦿

FE Schrift

FE Mittelschrift and FE Engschrift are the German typefaces used on automobile license plates. The FE stands for fälschungserschwerend, or hard to forge: for example, it is no longer possible to make a P into an R or a 3 into an 8 with a black marker pen. Developed from 1978-1980 by Karlgeorg Hoefer with th assistance of others such as the University of Giessen. It replaced the old DIN in 1994 and is an absolute monstrosity showing to what extremes governments will go in the name of security. Incredibly, several digital fonts have been made to resemble it, as if anyone would want to use it for anything other than on toilet paper wrappers:

• FE Mittelschrift and FE Engschrift (1997, Stephan Mueller, Lineto).
• Kraftfahrzeugkennzeichen (2008), a free font.
• FE-Font (1997), a free font by an unknown designer.
• Martin Core (Core.nu) claims his Sauerkrauto font was based on images of the German license plates.
• Gutenberg Labo made GL-Nummernschild-Eng and GL-Nummernschild-Mtl to replace FE Engschrift and FE Mittelschrift, respectively.

Felix Arnold

A Swiss designer and type designer (b. 1970, Basel), who made Cisalpin [also called Cassini in its earlier grotesque life, 1999-2000], a typeface for cartography, which was published it with Linotype in 2004. Pic. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Fernanda Martins

Brazilian type designer who studied at the Basel School of Design with Wolfgang Weingart and André Gürtler, and created the beautiful Bananas font (2001, letters shaped with bananas), Brasilia (1995, a sans face), the highwage signage face Graal (1998), Transbrasil (1999/2000) and Alphanumer (2000, some letters are replaced by mirrored or rotated numbers). She is working on the sans family FM Ruben (2001), which was started in the sixties by her father, Ruben Martins, who died in 1968. She does corporate type in general. Brief CV. [Google] [More]  ⦿

FF DIN
[Albert-Jan Pool]

The story of Albert-Jan Pool's information design type family FF DIN, told by FontShop: i, ii, iii, iv. [Google] [More]  ⦿

FHWA Series fonts

From the Wikipedia: The FHWA Series fonts (often informally referred to as Highway Gothic) are a set of sans-serif typefaces developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration and used for road signage in the U.S. and Canada. The fonts were created to maximize legibility at a distance and at high speed, growing out of research by the California Department of Transportation. They are officially defined by the FHWA's "Standard Alphabets for Traffic Control Devices", originally published in the late 1950s. Changes to the specifications were published in 1966, 1977, and 2000. The 2000 specifications differ from earlier versions in the shapes of a few letters. The set consists of seven fonts: "A" (the narrowest), "B", "C", "D", "E", "E(M)" (a modified version of "E" with wider strokes), and "F" (the widest). Series "A" has been officially discontinued, and is only seen today on older signage. The fonts originally included only uppercase letters, with the exception of "E(M)", which was used on large expressway and freeway guide signs. In 2004, the FHWA added lowercase letters to all of the typefaces and made changes to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices allowing their use. In recent years, the FHWA series of fonts has been adopted by many companies for branding; for example, NBC uses it for NBC Sports captions, and TV Guide uses the typeface on its cover. Also, The Weather Channel has utilized this typeface extensively, both on their weather maps and for their local forecasts. Over the next few decades, the new Clearview typeface, also specifically developed for use on traffic signs, is expected to replace the FHWA series on new signage. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Florian Philipp Martin Runge

Designer in London, who was born in Flensburg (Germany) and studied for four years in Aarhus (Denmark).

He made the contemporary informal typeface Jula (2012).

Asgaard was created during the one-week typeface design workshop tipoRenesansa in Trenta, Slovenia (February 2012). It is specially designed for street signage. Runge writes: To achieve great legibility the design paid much attention to features such as: large x-height, open counters, tiny serifs, slightly rounded corners, square terminals as well as inktraps. Research leading to asgaard is described in Runge's paper The echo of architecture in Danish type design of the 20. century.

Behance link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Font Bureau
[David Berlow]

Founded in 1989 by noted publications designer and consultant Roger Black and type designer David Berlow, Boston-based Font Bureau is, in my humble view, the best and most professional font design company in the world. It is uncompromising in its quest for quality. They have a good hold on the North-American newspaper market. I am not listing their fonts here---they are listed under the various type designers who have contributed to Font Bureau.

Catalog of Font Bureau's typefaces. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Fonts of Afrika
[Peter Slingsby]

Fonts of Afrika is Peter Slingsby's South African foundry selling mostly dingbat fonts at 4 to 6 USD per font. About ten of his 80 fonts are free. Includes rock art, African dingbats, wildlife, children, American railroads, Christian icons, safari, tourism. Great choice. Slingsby, the author and illustrator. Peter Slingsby sells some of his fonts at abstractfonts.com. These are original African dingbats or alphabets with an African feel. Reasonable prices (between 1 and 5 dollars per font). Names: Africa D History, Africa D Wildlife, Africa D People, Africa D Art, Africa T Inkuni, Africa TiQwara, Africa T Ndebele, Afrika Mfundisi, Africa T Ndlovu, Africa T Ubuntu, Africa T Xixo. List of fonts: Afrika Children 1 Rural, Afrika Children 2 Township, Afrika Children 3 at Play, Afrika Children 4 Faces, Afrika Children A Rural, Afrika Children B Township, Afrika Children C at Play, Afrika Children D Faces, Afrika Gold A Patterns, Afrika Images 11 Special, Afrika Images A /Xixo, Afrika Images A Xixo, Afrika Images B Ubuntu, Afrika Images C mKonto, Afrika Images DiQwara, Afrika Images E Dawuwu, Afrika Images F mBizo, Afrika Images G Sangoma, Afrika Images H Gau-aïb, Afrika Images H GauAib, Afrika RockArt 1 Groups, Afrika RockArt 2 People, Afrika RockArt 3 Animals, Afrika RockArt 4 Sevilla, Afrika RockArt A People 1, Afrika RockArt B People 2, Afrika RockArt C People 3, Afrika RockArt D People 4, Afrika RockArt E Beliefs 1, Afrika RockArt F Animals 1, Afrika RockArt G Animals 2, Afrika RockArt H TheEnd, Afrika RockArt I Bkloof 1, Afrika RockArt J Bkloof 2, Afrika RockArt K Bkloof 3, Afrika RockArt L Bkloof 4, Afrika RockArt M Cberg 1, Afrika RockArt N Cberg 2, Afrika mFundisi, Afrika T Inkuni, Afrika TiQwara, Afrika T Ndebele, Afrika T Ndlovu, Afrika T Ubuntu, Afrika T Xixo, Afrika Fonts Sampler, Afrika Phunny Phauna, Afrika Birds 1 Wetlands, Afrika Birds 2 Small, Afrika Birds 3 Large, Afrika Mammals 1 Small, Afrika Mammals 2 Large, Afrika Mammals 3 Antelope, Afrika Mammals 4 Spoor, Afrika Wildlife A Mammals 1, Afrika Wildlife B Mammals 2, Afrika Wildlife C Mammals 3, Afrika Wildlife D Mammals 4, Afrika Wildlife E Birds 1, Afrika Wildlife F BirdReps 2, Afrika Wildlife G Insects, Afrika Wildlife G Insectsplus, Afrika Wildlife H RockArt, Afrika Wildlife Ha RockArtplus, Afrika Safari A Ndebele, Afrika Safari B Paljas, Afrika Safari C Sossus, Afrika Safari D Shosholo, Afrika Safari E Inkuni, Afrika Safari F Gogga, Afrika Safari G Mfhungu, Afrika Safari H Kung SAFETY, Afrika Wildlife B Mammals 2, Christian Icons B Monograms, Christian Icons C Saints, Symblic Safety Signs 1, Symblic Safety Signs 2, Tourism Labelled, Tourism Labelled Negative, Tourism Labelled Outside, Tourism Labelout Negative, Tourism Unlabelled, Tourism Unlabelled Negative, Tourism Unlabelled Open. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Fonty PL
[Grzegorz Klimczewski]

Grzegorz Klimczewski, who runs Fonty PL, a Polish foundry, is the Polish designer of a commercial font that mimics the letters found on Polish traffic signs, called Tablica drogowa. He also made the commercial faces Naomi Sans, Rashel Serif, Grawer (monoline with many hairline weights), Pismo Szkolne (upright script), OCR-A, OCR-B, eTerminal, and the monospaced/typewriter family EFN AgeMono (10 styles). Pixel fonts by him include include EFN Cena, EFN Elegants, EFN Screen Banners, EFN Impressive, EFN Machines. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Fontyoufonts.com
[Henrik Kubel]

Nearly all (Mac only) fonts at Fontyoufonts.com are made by Henrik Kubel, who works at the London-based design studio A2-GRAPHICS/SW/HK in London, which was founded in 2000 by Royal College of Art graduates Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel. Henrik Kubel is visiting lecturer at Royal College of Art since 2009. In 2010, Kubel and Williams set up A2 Typwe. Kubel's text fonts include FY-Battersea, FY-Klampenborg, FY-Neon, FY-ParsonsGreen, FY-M.Carpenter, FY-Gt.Eastern, FY-Stencil, FY-Typewriter, FY-Centera, FY-Cubitt Fax, FY-S.Staton. The display fonts include FY-Grot-7, FY-Boing, FY-Army, FY-Woodblock, FY-Rodeo, FY-Ornamenta, FY-Italic One, FY-Signsystem, FY-Black, FY-Stencil. There are grid-based/pixel fonts such as FY-Lego-Logo, FY-Bauhaus (a kitchen tile font), FY-Link, FY-Optic, FY-Graduate, FY-MeSoHungry, FY-Buckminster, FY-3D (2001), FY-Dictate, FY-Angel, FY-DotZero, FY-Square. Finally, there are the dingbat fonts FY-Pictogrammes, FY-Early Learning Dingbats. Kubel is also the designer at ACME of 4590, AF-Battersea (1999, a grotesque family), AF-CENTERA, AF-Copenhagen, AF-Klampenborg (1997-1999, grotesque sans, done with Scott Williams), CPH-ArabicNumbers, CPH-Medium, Grot-25. With Margaret Calvert, he updated the British Rail fonts in 2009, adding East European characters, for example. At ATypI 2010 in Dublin, he spoke about New Rail Alphabet, a revival of that typeface, still with Margaret Calvert. During the Expert Type Design Class (2011, Plantin Genootschap, Antwerp), he created the text family called Antwerp. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Frank Rausch

Creator of Caracteres L1, L2 and L4 (2004), free fonts that cover L1, L2 and L4, the French traffic sign alphabets. Not to be confused with the German type designer Frank Rausch. [Google] [More]  ⦿

G. C. Heins, C. G. LaFarge and S. J. Vickers

Designers of various tile-based fonts for New York's subway in 1901. Read about it in Lee Stokey's book, Subway Ceramics (1992). Two fonts by Nick Curtis were inspired by that tiling in New York's subway, Downtown Tessie NF (2006) and Midtown Tessie NF (2006). [Google] [More]  ⦿

G. Knight

G. Knight made an arrow font for highway signs, called Highway Arrows. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Gareth Attrill

Designer in 2002 of UKNumberPlate. Fontspace link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Garrett Reil

Garrett Reil (Rain Design, Ireland) is a graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design and the National College of Art&Design (MA). He has worked in London and Dublin with leading international design consultancies. He founded Rain design partners in 1998 with Clíona Geary. Garrett lives in the picturesque twin towns of Ballina-Killaloe and does much of his work in Dublin and around Ireland. Garrett designed the size-specific New Johnston Book typeface for London Transport with Colin Banks and John Miles at Banks&Miles London; he co-designed signing manuals for Bass Plc and created a number of their retail brands; with Landor Associates he led the implementation of a new identity for Delta Air Lines. In 2008-2009, he got involved in the design of road signs for Ireland, and his proposal is Turas (2009). It deals with matters such as halation (the effect of headlights hitting a highly reflective material used in modern signs. This causes an overglow, which can make the sign difficult to read), bilingual time delay, and the longer Irish names. Ireland adopted the Transport type designed for UK roads by Jock Kinneir, a design lecturer at the Royal College of Art, and Margaret Calvert, his assistant, in the late 1950's and early 1960s. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Gary L. Ratay

Gary L. Ratay made the Inter travel dingbats font in 1991. See also here or here or here or here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Geoscience Archive

Font and dingbat links for the geosciences. [Google] [More]  ⦿

GeoSymbol

GeoSymbol is a commercial geological symbol font can be bought here for 75 USD. GeoSymbol is also the name of the company. [Google] [More]  ⦿

GIS Panorama

The fonts.zip file contains free topographical symbols for Latin and Cyrillic: A431Italic, Bm431Italic (text face with cyrillic letters included), Ch122Bold (Cyrillic only), D431Italic, D432BoldItalic, P131, P152SemiBold, T132SemiBold, Do431Italic, all made by GIS Panorma, or Panorama Group, in 2004. Gruppa Provincia, Nizhny Novgorod, made Bo2-Italic, Ch131-Regular (Cyrillic only), Ch132-Bold (Cyrillic only), D231Regular (Cyrillic only), P112-Semibold (Cyrillic only), P151 (Cyrillic only), T1-131, T2131, all in 1994. From 2005-2007, they made D231, D431, D432 and Do431Italic. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Golden Software

This outfit produced the map symbol font GSIMapSymbols in 1999. Its fonts are part of their mapping software packages. [Google] [More]  ⦿

GSC ArcInfo Symbolsets

Free map symbol fonts: GSC1, GSC10, GSC2, GSC3, GSC4, GSC5, GSC6, GSC7, GSC8, GSC9. [Google] [More]  ⦿

GSC ArcInfo Symbolsets

From the Government of Canada: "The suite of GSC ArcInfo Symbolsets consists of line, marker (point), shade (area) and text symbols appearing on geological maps produced by the Cartographics Services Section since 1995." The following truetype fonts are included: GSC1, GSC10, GSC2, GSC3, GSC4, GSC5, GSC6, GSC7, GSC8, GSC9, Inuktitut-Sri-Regular, Nunacom, OldSyl. The last two fonts are Inultitut fonts by Krista Thompson, Nortext Multimedia (1997-1998). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Gutenberg Labo

Japanese font foundry committed to making open license fonts based on old prints. It is run by Judicare and Eunice. Fontspace link. The fonts:

• GL-MahjongTile (2009).
• GL-Grimoire-MajKey and GL-Grimoire-MinKey (2007-2009). The former is from the medieval grimoire "The Greater Key of Solomon" (font for the Sacred Pentacles). The latter is from the medieval grimoire "GOETIA The Lesser Key of Solomon" (font for the medieval grimoire "GOETIA The Lesser Key of Solomon").
• GL-Runen (2007-2009): Elder Futhark runes.
• GL-Nummernschild-Mtl and GL-Nummernschild-Eng (2009): German license plates typeface (FE-Mittelschrift, FE-Engschrift). The original goes back to Karlgeorg Hoefer.
• GL-DancingMen (2007-2009): Cipher from "The Adventure of the Dancing Men", The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
• GL-Suetterlin: German handwriting face.
• GL-Antique (+GL-AntiquePlus) (2003-2009): Japanese antique style "kana" font. Only hiragana, katakana and symbols. These fonts are quite complete and contain thousands of dingbats, arrows, and symbols.
• GL-Tsukiji family (2008-2009): hiragana and katakana fonts from the Meiji era type foundry Tokyo Tsukiji Kappan.

Guy Jeffrey Nelson

New Yorker who made FF Providence (1993, a children's hand), Interstate Pi (1994, four fonts with US highway signs done at Font Bureau) and Tasse (1994). He does custom work for Font Bureau. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Hannah Dossary

Hannah Dossary (Nottingham, UK) created an Arabic type companion for the road sign family ClearviewHwy (2011) while studying communication at Loughborough University. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Harris Design
[James M. Harris]

James M. Harris' Colorado Springs, CO-based foundry sells five fonts designed by himself, SignPix (1, 2, 3, 4), Earth Font One (1993), PictographOne (1996), and Strasbourg through Fonthaus and Agfa/Monotype. It specializes in tourist and road signs. Harris Design will turn your logo into a (TTF or type 1) font. List of fonts. Jim Harris also made the old shareware fonts Bellerose (1992, an avant-garde face), Mazama, Premium Thin, RhyoliteVertical (1990) and Andesite (1991) which can be found on many archives. Yet another URL. MyFonts link. Old home page. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Highway Sign of the Week
[Bruce S. Cridlebaugh]

Bruce S. Cridlebaugh (Prisma Inc, Pittsburgh, PA) created USHighwaysOldStyleBCBA in 2000. 5USD shareware, all formats. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Highway signage fonts

Discussion of highway signage fonts by John Berry. He discusses:

• FF DIN: a FontShop font. DIN stands for Deutsche Industrie Norm. FF DIN is based on DIN-Mittelschrift, the German Autobahn's typeface. FF DIN is Albert-Jan Pool's reworking of DIN-Mittelschrift.
• Interstate: a Font Bureau font by Tobias Frere-Jones, based on the US highway system signs. [Personal note: for similar type, see Blue Highway]
• ClearviewOne: James Montalbano's font for highway signs developed with Don Meeker of Meeker&Associates. In 2002, the USA decided to start using ClearviewHwy for its road signs.
• ITC Conduit by Mark van Bronkhorst.

HTM fan

Dutch type designer. His HTMCijfersenBusletter (2003, free at OFL) is based on the HTM (Haagse Tramweg Maatschappij) street cars en buses from 1905-1967. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Hucklebuck Design Studio
[Andy Hayes]

Andy Hayes (Hucklebuck Design Studio, springfield, OH) created Reverend Italic (2011), an architectural drawing italic as seen on Foundfont. Priest Condensed (2011) is a condensed wood type headline face. It is unclear if they also made the grotesk face Modelfont (2011). Vanity Numbers (2009) is a number font based on old Californian license plates. Model Plane Slab (2009) is a slab serif headline face with wood type influences. In 2010, they made M.C. Gothic Condensed. Grain-O (2011) is another grotesk headline face.

In 2012, Andy Hayes desgned Bad Postcard and Postal Gothic. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Iconian Fonts
[Dan M. Zadorozny]

Born in Philadelphia and a resident of Texas, Dan Zadorozny's creations at Iconian. He is a prolific type designer who specializes in techno and sci-fi typefaces. Dafont link. Fontsy link. Abstract Fonts link. Font Squirrel link. His fonts in alphabetical order:

• #44 font (2002), 00Starmap (2001, pixel font), 1st Cav (2008), 2-Tech, 2nd Amendment (2007, guns), 2nd Amendment 2050 (2009, more gun silhouettes), 2Toon, 300 Trojans (2008, comic book family), 4114 Blaster (2008, futuristic), 5th Agent (2008, techno), 7th Service (2002), 911Porscha.
• Achilles, Action-Men (2008), Action Women (2008, female outlines), Aegis (2010, Greek simulation family), Aetherfox, AirCobra (2002), Aircruiser (2011, trekkie family), AirForce (planes and copters), Airstrip One (2003), Aldo's Moon, Aldo's Nova, Alexis (2001), Alien League, Alpha Sentry, Alpha Taurus (2007, octagonal, athletic lettering), Amalgam, Anakefka (2009, ultra-fat family), Anitlles (2009, sans family), Argosy, Arilon (2008), Astropolis (2009), Atlantia (2012, futuristic), Avenger (2008, futuristic).
• Babes&Bond (2009, erotic silhouettes), Babe-alicious (2002, erotic outlines), Bad Robot (2007, computer game look), Bal-Astaral, Bamf (2011, techno family), Battlefield, Beam Rider, Beastian (2011), Ben Zion (2008, Hebrew simulation), Berserker (2008, grunge), Beta Biergärten (2008), Bio-disc, Bio-discSolid, Bio-discThin, Bionic Comic (2002), Bionic Type (2002), Birds of a Feather (2007, dingbats), Block, Blood Crow (2009), Bloodlust (2011, dripping blood face), Blue July (2009), Brin Athyn (2008, uncial/Celtric), Bronic (2004), Bummer (2007, octagonal), Bushido (2008, oriental simulation), Buttons the Bear (2008, children's hand), Byte Police.
• Capella (2011, a wide techno family), CasperComics, Chardin Doihle (2008), a useful informal handprinting family), Charlemagne, Charlie's-Angles, Cheyenne Hand (2008), Christendom, Colossus (2011, old chipped stone look), ComicBookCommando, ComicFX, Commonwealth, Concielian, Corinthian, Coyote Deco (2007, art deco), Crappity-Crap-Crap (2007), Crixus (2011, a squarish sans that includes an athletic lettering style), Cro-Magnum (2003), CryUncial, Cyberia (like Soviet: neat Russian imitation letters).
• DS Man, Daedalus (2008), Dan Stargate (2008), Dan'sHand, Dark Horse (nice brush font), Darkwind, Delta Ray, Department-K, DepartmentH, Deranian (2008), Detonator, DiegoCon (2004), Ding-o-saurs (2007), Direktor (2008, Cyrillic simulation techno), Disco-Dork, Disco Deck (2005), Disco Duck, Dodger, Dotcom (2002), Drafting Table (2008), Dragon Order (oriental simulation), Drid Herder (2002), Droid-Lover (2008), Drosselmeyer (my favorite).
• Eagleclaw (2009), Eaglemania, Earth's Mightiest (2002), Eco-files, Eldebaran (2012), Elder Magic (2009), Election Day (2009), Empire Crown (2011, blackletter), Enduro, Ensign Flandry, Ephesian (2007), Erin Go Bragh (2009, Celtic/uncial), EscapeArtist, EverettSteele'sHand, Excelerate, Excelsior, Exedore (2008), Extechchop (2005).
• Factor, Falconhead, Famous Spaceships (2007), FantasticCreatures, Fantazian (2003), Fantom (2009, bad handwriting), Federal Service (2011), Federapolis (2008, octagonal techno face), Fedyral, Fedyral-II, Feldercarb (2003, octagonal font), Fight Kid (2009), First Order (2001), Flight Corps (2008, techno/pixelish), FlyingLetaherneck (2002), Force Majeure, Free-Agent (2008), FunnyPages, Futurex Grunge (2005).
• Galant, Galaxy-1 (2008), Galaxy Far Far Away (2009, futuristic dingbat font), Galga (2008, futuristic), Gamma Sentry, Gemina (2011, sci-fi / techno family), Generation Nth, GeoBats (2007), Goalie (2008, hockey mask alphading), Gods of War, Governor, Graymalkin (2011, trekky), Grendel's Mother, Grimlord (2009), Guardian (2008), Guardian-Laser (2008), Guardian-Pro (2008), Guardian-Shadow (2008), Gunship, Gunship V2 (2002), Gyrfalcon.
• Hadriatic (2008, roman lettering), Hall of Heroes (2007), Halo, Han Solo, Harrier (2002), Hawkmoon (2011), Heorot (2009, stone age fonts), Heroes Assemble (2011), Highrise Heaven (2007, city skyline dingbats), Holy Empire, Homemade-Robot, Homeworld (2003), Homeworld Translator (2003), Hulkbusters, Hypno Agent.
• ICebox Art (2012), IWantMyTTR!, Iconian (2002), Iconified, Illuminati, Imaginary Forces (2008, mythical dingbats), Imperial Code (2003, Startrek style face), Imperium, Incubus, Incubus-Italic (2008), Incubus-Shadow (2008), Infinity Formula (2003, super techno), Infobubble, Interceptor (2008), International Super Hero (2002), Intrepid, Iron-Cobra (2008), Iron Forge (2012).
• Jackson, Jannisaries, Jerusalem (1999, Hebrew font simulation)[see also here], Jetta, JettaTech, Judge, Judge Hard, Justice (2009), Jumptroops (2003), Justinian.
• Kahless, KameraDings (2009), KarateChop (2009), Kartoons (2008), Katana, Keystone (pixel font), Khazad-Dum (2011), Kid Cobalt (2008, comic book face), Kinex, King Commando (2011), King's Ransom, KnightsTemplar, Knock Furious (2003, dingbats), Kobold (2008, futuristic), Kountry Kodes (2008, international license plate lettering), Kovacs-Spot, Kovacs, Kreeture (2002), Kubrick (2008).
• Lamprey (2012, techno family), LandShark (2001), LandWhale (2001), Laserian, Law and Order (2005, dingbats), LegalTender, Legion, Lightsider (2011, Star Trekkish family), Lincoln Lode, Lionel (2009), Low Gun Screen (2008, a totally square screen type family), Lincoln Chain, Lionheart, Lobo-Tommy (2008), Lord of the Sith, Loveladies, Low Gun Screen (2008, screen face).
• Machiavelli, Mad Marker, Magic Beans (2007), Marathon-II, Marathon, Masked Marvel (2002), Masterdom (2004), Metal Storm 3D (2008), Metroplex, MetroplexLaser, MetroplexShadow, Michaelmas, Micronian (2009, pixelish headline family), Milk Bar (2003), Micronian (2008, extensive pixel-based family), Military-RPG (2008), Missile Man (2002, futuristic), Miss Amanda Jones (2004, brush style), Mobile Infantry, Monsterama (2011, scary face), Moon Dart (2008), Morse Kode, MorseNK, Movie Gallery (2008, dingbats), Mystic Singler (2008, rough brush face).
• National Express (2003), Native Alien, Neo-Geo (like the letters on the Neon cars), Neuralnomicon, Nick Turbo (2001), NifeFite, NifeFiter, NifeFites, Nightrunner (2008, sci-fi), Nightwraith (2011, techno family), Ninjas (2002), NoloContendre, Nostromo, Nyet (2002, Soviet letter simulation).
• Oberon, Oberon-Deux, Obsidiscs (2003, dingbats), Odinson (2007, runes), Olympicons (2003), Omega 3 (2010, futuristic), Omega Sentry, OmniGirl (2003, techno), Opilio (2012), Oramac (2004), Outlands-Truetype (2001), Ozda (2011, a fat techno family with several horizontally striped styles), Ozymandias.
• Pandemonious Puffery (2002), Parker's Hand (2002, handwriting), Perdition, Peregrine, Phaser Bank (2008, techno), Philadelphia, Philly Dings (2003), Piper Pie (2007), Pistoleer (2011), Planet N, Planet S, Planet X, Player 1 Up (2012: architectural family), Postmaster, Power Lord (2011), Presley-Press (2007; + Presley-Press-3D, Presley-Press-Bold, Presley-Press-CondItal, Presley-Press-Condensed, Presley-Press-ExtraBold, Presley-Press-ExtraBold-Ital, Presley-Press-Italic), Press Darling (2012), Procyon, Prokofiev (2009, rounded and squarish), Promethean (2008), Protoplasm, Pseudo Saudi (1999, Arabic simulation), PuffAngel, Pulse Rifle (2009), Pyrabet.
• Quake-&-Shake, Quartermain (2002), Quasitron (2009, futuristic), Quatl (2002, an Inca font), Queen&Country (2009), Quest Knight (2009), Questlok, QuickGear, Quickmark (2004), QuickQuick, QuickStrike, QuickTech.
• RCMP, RadZad, Radio-Space, Realpolitik, Rebecca, Rebel Command (2012, Star Trek family), Redcoat (2008, blackletter), Red Rocket (2011, techno), Regulators, Replicant, Rhalina (2011, a nice upright script), Righteous Kill (2009), Robotaur (2008), Rocket Junk, Rocket Type (2002), Rogue-Hero, Roid Rage (2003), Ro'Ki'Kier (2008), Rosicrucian (2009, stone age font).
• Sable Lion (2002), Sagan (2008, futuristic), Scarab, ScarabScript, Sci-Fi (2008), Sea-Dog, Searider-Falcon (2008), Secret Files (2011), Sever, SisterEurope, Snubfighter (2009, sci-fi), Soldier (2011), Sound FX (2003), Soviet, Space Cruiser, Space Junker, SPQR (2008, grunge roman), Spy Lord (2001), Starduster (2011), Starfighter, Star Navy (2009: dingbats), Strikelord (2011, trekkie family), Stuntman, SuperUltra911, Superago (2002).
• Talkies (2008, dingbats), Taskforce (2008), Tele-Marines, Terra Firma, Texas, Texas2, TheRifleman, The Shire (2009), Thundergod, Thunder-Hawk (2011, an aviation techno face), Timberwolf (2011), Time Warriors (2007), Tool (2012, dingbats of tools), Toon Town Industrial (2005, comic book font), Tracer, Trajia (2008, a techno/stencil/athletic lettering family), Traveler (2008), Travelicons (2009), Travesty (2003, scrawly handwriting), Trek Trooper (2008, Startrek font), Trireme (2011, Star trek family), Tristram (2008, uncial), Troopers (2011, futuristic), Trueheart (2009, Celtic), Tussle (2002), Typeecanoe.
• Uberholme, Uberholme Lazar (2001), UFO Hunter (2009), Ultra 911, Unisol, UniversalJack, Uno Estado (2009, constructivist), U.S.A., USArmy, US Navy (2007), U.S.S. Dallas (2008), Usuzi.
• Valerius (2009, uncial), Valkyrie (2008), Valley Forge (2008), Vampire Games (2001), VariShapes (2001), VideoStar, Vigilante Notes (2003), Vilmos Magyar, voxBOX, Voortrekker Pro (2009: octagonal and athletic lettering family), Vorpal (2012: sci-fi stencil face), Vyper (2008, futuristic stencil).
• War Eagle (2009), War Machine, Warrior Nation (2011), Wars of Asgard (2009), Weaponeer (2008, military lettering), Were-Beast (2008), Whatafont, Ensign Flandry (2003), Whiskey Bravo (2003), Wildcard (2011, Star trek family), Wimp Out (2004), Wolf's Bane, Worldnet (great wordly O), Write Off, Writer's-Block, WyldStallyns.
• Xaphan (2003), XCryption (1999, a hacker face), XPED, Xcelsion (2002), Xenophobia, Xephyr, Xeppelin (2005, zeppelin dingbats), X-Grid (2008), Xiphos (2007), Xoxoxa, X-Racer (2012).
• Yahren, Yama Moto (2009: oriental simulation), Yankee Clipper (2011), Year 2000, Year3000 (2001), Yellow Jacket (2002), Yiroglyphics (2004), Yorstat (oriental simulation), Youngtechs (2008, futuristic), Yukon Tech.
• Za's Vid (2001, pixel font), Zado (2002, dot-matrix font), Zakenstein (2011, caps only grunge), Zamboni Joe (2002), Zealot (2008), Zee Lance, Zen Masters (2002), Zeta Sentry (2009, techno/futuristic), Zone Rider, Zoologic (2009, animal dingbats), Zyborgs, Zymbols.

IFSYM
[Ingo Klöckl]

Metafont dingbats by Ingo Klöckl (1999-2000). It has clocks, weather symbols, dice, prisoner counts, ski slope signs, mountaineering symbols, map symbols, geometric symbols. [Google] [More]  ⦿

IIID
[Erik Spiekermann]

The International Institute for Information Design (IIID) was founded to develop research and practice in optimizing information and information systems for knowledge transfer in everyday life, business, education and science. It is located in Austria, and its current director is Peter Simlinger. In 2010, Erik Spiekermann and IIID published a new official type family for Austrian traffic signs, called Tern (for Trans- European Road Network). It contains both standard sans stryles and pixel versions for screens. The styles are called TernVMSonefour, TernVMStwozero, TernVMStwofour, TernVMSthreeone, Tern Regular, Tern Narrow, and Tern Italic. Tern can be purchased by the general public. Study (PDF). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Ilya Ruderman

Russian type design graduate of KABK in Den Haag, The Netherlands. Cofounder in 2005 of Daily Type. Type professor of considerable influence. Creator of faces such as Praline Pro (Paratype, 2006-2007, a retro script; award winner at Paratype K2009), Big City Grotesque (which also won an award at Paratype K2009), Best Life Serif (codesigned with Yuri Ostromentsky, which also won an award at Paratype K2009) and Beetlejuice Script (his fourth awarded typeface at Paratype K2009). Ilya Ruderman and Paul Barnes published Austin and Austin Cyrillic in 2007-2009 at Commercial Type, which writes Designed for British style magazine Harper's & Queen, Austin is a loose revival of the typefaces of Richard Austin of the late 18th century for the publisher John Bell. Working as a trade engraver Austin cut the first British modern and later the iconoclastic Scotch Roman. Narrow without being overtly condensed, Austin is a modern with the styling and sheen of New York in the 1970s. In 2010, Ilya Ruderman spearheaded an extensive project for traffic signage and information in Moscow called Permian. The Permian family has slab, sans and serif components. Images of Permian: Showcase, Specimen, Capitals, Details, Construction, Lowercase, Numerals, Serif. Permian won Second Prize in the cyrillic typeface competition at Granshan 2011. His Meteor Script (2011) won Third Prize in the display text category at Granshan 2011. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Interpretation Resources

Nova Scotia-based company which makes a free font available: Nova Scotia Highway Numbers v2 (2006). [Google] [More]  ⦿

J. Rose

T. Harvey and J. Rose at Whiteshell.com are the designers of the handprinted font Beltway Prophecy (2001), based on signage seen on I-95. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jacob Øvergaard

Norwegian type designer who created these fonts:

• Jacobs 1933 Pro (2005, art deco lettering based on a Norwegian calendar from 1933).
• Jacobs Runer (2003, rune fonts).
• Jacobs Web (2002, bitmap font).
• Jacobs Display (2000).
• Jacobs Flatt (2000).
• Jacobs Monoline (2000).
• Synnøve (2003, a connected script done with Helene C. Jenssen).
• Jacobs Sans (2005, a rounded sans serif).
• XMyriad, a family custom designed for the Norwegian Red Cross (hence the X) based on Adobe's MyriadMM.
• He digitized Trafikkalfabetet (2006) for Norwegian traffic signs.

Jean Benoit-Levy

Codesigner at Typebox with seven others of dingbats in the traffic signal font TxSignal Signifier (2002). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jean-Paul Bideau

Free maritime cartographic trueType and type 1 fonts Sy1Ca and Sy2Ca, and a free diacritics font DiTimes, all by Jean-Paul Bideau. PC, Mac and X-windows. Copyright EPSHOM, BREST, 1998. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jim Poserina

Designer of Road Sign D. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jock Kinneir

British type designer, born in 1917. Designed TransportD (1963) with Margaret Calvert, in a project for the British Government started in 1957. Two fonts were made, Transport Medium and Transport Heavy. The Akzidenz-Grotesk-inspired typeface is used in countries around the world, such as the crown dependencies, British overseas territories and in Commonwealth states or former nations of the British Empire. The typeface is also used in Hong Kong, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain. Rail Alphabet (1965) was also designed by both, this time as a rebranding face for British Rail. The font can still be seen in station signage. Wikipedia states that Rail Alphabet is similar, but not identical, to a bold weight of Helvetica.

Andrea Bergamini, who is involved in Italian road signage type, writes: The story is a bit complicated and confused. The road and highway signage is based on relatively international standards, that also involve the fonts to be used. From the beginning of the '60s Italy used the font designed (from 1957 to 1967) specifically for street signs in the UK. The designers of the sign layouts and the of the font in use are Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, and the font is Transport (URW, 1980). The laws on Italian signage (quite depressing) are on any complete edition of the Italian “Codice della Strada” -Manual of road laws and rules, that has specimens of all the alphabets to be used. Some engineers from the Public Works Department, one of which maybe was called Cecilia, worked on it. The system designed by Kinneir and implemented in 1963 is an example of stylistic durability. In an article called “Roadside traffic sign” (originally published on the British magazine Design No. 178, 1963) Anthony Froshaug proved that there was no reason for an improvement of that signage system. The Italian license plates are designed by the IPZS, the Istituto Poligrafico. In Spring 2003 the Triennale in Milano hosted a very interesting show called “Asfalto, the character of the city”. In my research, I found that Traffic Type Spain D (from an unknown designer), as it appears here is a lot closer in look to what appears on the Italian highways than Kinneir's Transport, (1957-67), even in its Heavy variant. My opinion is that the font that is being used took its shape from Kinneir's original design (the similarity with it is out of doubt), but was redrawn and applied without consideration of what were the lighting and optical problems concerned. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Joe Clark, Toronto Writer

Joe Clark's essays on typography. Typoblog: his old blog on type. Newest URL for his type blog. Author of the must-read book Building Accessible Websites (2002). At ATypI 2003 in Vancouver, he spoke about typography for online captioning. ATypI writes: Toronto journalist, author (Building accessible websites, New Riders, 2003), and accessibility consultant Joe Clark has followed typography as long as he.s followed accessibility for people with disabilities: over 20 years. He is director of the Open&Closed Project, a public-private-academic partnership in research and standardisation in captioning, audio description, subtitling, dubbing, and related fields in audiovisual accessibility. At ATypI 2007 in Brighton, he spoke about Type in the Toronto Subway. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Joe Clark: Type in the Toronto subway
[Joe Clark]

Joe Clark tells us about the typeface used in the Toronto subway: The Toronto subway has a typeface all its own. You can compare it to a few other fonts, but no other face is exactly the same. And, for 50 years, pretty much the only place you found it was on permanent, virtually indestructible wall signage. The typeface, in its original form, is a geometric sansserif in upper case only, with ten numerals, ampersand, period, and apostrophe, and an arrow (though a few other arrows are found on period signage). The typeface is often misidentified at Gill Sans, a typeface that will later become important in TTC typographic history. Even highly expert designers have misidentified the face as Gill. Vaguely comparable typefaces are Verlag, Bernhard Gothic, Metro, Neutraface, and Eagle. [...] By all accounts, no one alive today knows who designed the Toronto subway typeface. The original drawings (TTC 1960) do not credit an artist. (Since the drawings are dated 1960.12.12, they were drawn after the first installation of letters on a subway wall. That makes the absence of credit even more surprising; it may mean the designer had already been forgotten six years after the subway opened.) The subway typeface does not have a name, although the TTC claims (2007a) it is known internally as the Station font. That name has not taken root with transit fans outside the TTC. No stable name for the typeface in common use apart from "the TTC font." [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jon Whipple

Designer of the sans family Kompass (2004), which was specially created for maps and diagrams. Jon is a graphic designer in Vancouver. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Josh Bingham

Josh Bingham (b. 1982) lives in California. At Devian Tart, he designed Point Blank and Featherweight in 1999. I am confused, because what is in the font does not correspond to the web page, which says that he is Arthur Shotwell. Other fonts by him: Rollover (2007), 20th Century Woodcut (2004), the postal series (2004, consists of Parcel Post, Media Mail, First Class, and Air Mail), Halftone (2004), Unprofesional, Tron, Scrawl, Platform Shoe, Maps, Kaboom, Federal Reserve, Faces, Curvature, Bitmap, Bellbottom, Ballpoint, Quill, No Smoking, Perfectly Cromulent, Chronicle (2004, modeled after the lettering in the San Francisco Chronicle), 20th Century Woodcut (2004). Dafont link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jugurta Lisboa Filho

Brazilian designer of the geographical symbol font Sigmoda. [Google] [More]  ⦿

JUSoft
[Jan Urban]

JUSoft is a Czech outfit where Jan Urban (from Blansko) made the dingbat font OB Piktogramy (1998). It has pictograms for use on maps and in cities. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Karl Petter Sandbæk

Designer of the lettering for traffic signs in Norway, called Trafikkalfabet (1965). This was digitized in 2006 by Jacob Øvergaard. Examples here and here. In the last link, Ralf Herrmann explains the flaws: It bears a resemblance to the German DIN typeface, but it also has some unique features, some of them are good, some are bad. Both typefaces share a very simple geometric design and they are good examples of typefaces, that look like they were made on the drawing-board of an engineer rather than designed by a type designer. [...] A type designers knows how to optically adjust geometrical shapes to make them look right. The tip of the M needs to go below the baseline and the dot of the i needs to be wider than the stem. But the design of the Trafikkalfabetet typeface rather aims at consistent values. As a result, the dot of the i is way too small, especially for a typeface that should be legible at great distance. The spacing of the typeface has the similar problems. Uniform values for left and right sidebearings cannot create uniform spacing. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Karl Wångstedt

Wångstedt digitized the Swedish traffic signal font family Tratex (2002), designed by KarlGustav Gustafson and modified by Chester Bernsten, who works for the Swedish Road Administration, Vägverket. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Karlgeorg Hoefer

German scribe, type designer and unbelievable calligrapher, b. 1914 in Schlesisch-Drehnow, d. 2000 in Offenbach. Following schooling in Schlesien and Hamburg, he served a four-year typesetting apprenticeship from 1930-1934 in Hamburg and later at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Offenbach am Main. From 1939 until 1945 he was in active military service and became a prisoner of the Russians. After that ordeal, he became a calligraphy teacher at the Werkkunstschule in Offenbach, and developed a universal pen with novel writing and drawing techniques for the company Brause. It is at that point that Hoefer started designing types as well. From 1970 to 1979, Hoefer was a lecturer and later professor at the HfG (School of Design) in Offenbach. From 1981 to 1988, Hoefer ran summer calligraphy workshops in the USA (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, and other cities). In 1982, Karlgeorg Hoefer founded a calligraphy workshop in Offenbach for everyone, with evening courses and summer school, and in 1987, the registered association "Calligraphy Workshop Klingspor, Offenbach, Supporters of International Calligraphy." From 1987 to 1995, he was the chairman of the association while teaching continuing courses and summer school classes with leading foreign calligraphers. Hoefer has written two books about calligraphy: "Das alles mit einer Feder" (Brause, 1953) and "Kalligraphie, gestaltete Handschrift" (Econ, 1986). Numerous articles about Hoefer's work have appeared in calligraphy journals in Holland, France, the USA, and Japan. In 1989, the book "Schriftkunst/Letterart Karlgeorg Hoefer" was published as part of Calligraphy-Editions Herbert Maring (Die Kalligraphie Edition, Hardheim, Germany, 1989). For his activities as a calligrapher, Hoefer received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1993. His typefaces:

• At Klingspor: Salto (1952), Saltino (1953), Saltarello (1954), Monsun (1954). Salto is a famous and often-copied brush script.
• At D. Stempel: Prima (1957), Zebra (1963-1965, D. Stempel, a script that plays on the simulation of grey; revived by Colin Kahn in 2007 under the same name at P22).
• At Ludwig&Mayer: Permanent (1962-1979, a large Grotesk family developed over many years---this was revived by Daylight in 2010 as Permanent Massiv; URW sells Permanent Headline URW D without even a word about the original designer; Softmaker has Plakette Serial and P700 sans), Stereo (1963, an outline poster headline script developed between 1957 and 1968; digitally revived in 1993 as Stereo (Font Bureau)), Elegance (1964, a handwriting script, which was the basis for Sincerely (2005, Canada Type)), Big Band (1974, a fat poster script revived in 2007 by Nick Curtis as Baby Cakes NF), Headline (1964, a poster face that emanated fom Permanent).
• Programm-Grotesk (1970): Hoefer's first digital typeface, commissioned by JT Hellas for the Greek telephone books It was first used in the digital machine Digiset of Dr. Ing. Hell in Kiel.
• From 1978-1980, Karlgeorg got involved in the development of a German license plate font that could withstand forgery by black marker pens. The typeface, FE Mittelschrift/Engschrift, had also input from other sources.
• Lateinischen Ausgangsschrift (1974): a school script for the Linotype phototypesetter. This led later to VA Schrift (Berthold and Linotype).
• At Linotype: Omnia (1990, a unicase face with a Celtic uncial feel), San Marco (1990, round gothic / Rundgotisch), Notre Dame (1991-1993, a full blackletter face), Dominatrix (1994), Sho (1992, Asian brush script), Beneta (1992, a French bastarda inspired by the Littera beneventana, the script of the Benedictine scribes from the 10th to the 12th century).

karta

Travel dingbats in metafont format. No info on the author. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Keith Tam Typography
[Keith Chi-Hang Tam]

Keith Tam is a graphic designer and type designer born in Hong kong who has lived and worked in the UK and in Vancouver, Canada. He received his MA in Typeface Design at the Department of Typography&Graphic Communication at the University of Reading in 2002. Presently, he teaches art the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 2005, along with Michail Semoglou, Keith co-founded Type Initiative, a type foundry and design collective. Currently, he is Assistant Professor in the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His fonts include Arrival (a font developed during his graduate studies at Reading for reading signs from afar or while driving) and DGSans. He started a discussion on why people pick certain typefaces:

• legibility
• prevailing trend/fashion
• personal taste client's wishes/preferences
• historical context (reflecting the time and place of the content)
• context of use (kind of paper, method of printing, etc)
• stereotypes (established conventions, e.g. script type for wedding invitation)
• uniqueness (in terms of distinguishing from others)

Kevin Roberson

Cocreator of TX Signal Simplifier (2002, Typebox), a hilarious information design dingbat face. MyFonts writes: Eight designers present a set of icons that indicate the fun and fantastic world of signage. Each collaborator's solution represents a completely different interpretations on signage vernacular. The designers are Erik Adigard, Cynthia Jacquette, Akira Kobayashi, Michael Kohnke, Patricia McShane, Joachim Müller-Lancé, Jean-Benoît Lévy, Kevin Roberson, Diana Alisandra Stoen. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Knud V. Engelhardt

Danish architect, 1882-1931. One of Denmarks's leading designers, who designed kilometer stones, type for trams, street signs, and is well known in type circles for a slab-serif alphabet made for the city of Copenhagen with heavy wide capitals. CV. In 2010, Swedish designer Mårten Thavenius created Skilt Gothic (Font Bureau), which was based on signage types by Engelhardt from the 1920s, including those he created for the street signs in Gentofte, north of Copenhagen. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Kraftfahrzeugkennzeichen
[Bart Stax]

Bart Stax is the designer of Kraftfahrzeugkennzeichen (2008), a free font that looks exactly like the lettering used on German car license plates. I can't understand how Germans can live with this monstrosity---I know that it was designed for maximal differentiation, but there are limits to functional design! Another German license plate font, by an unknown designer, is FE-Font (1997, see also here), which is closer to the original FE license plate design (FE stands for F&aml;lschungs-Erschwerend, translated as "hard to forge"). [Google] [More]  ⦿

K's Bookshelf
[Yoshio Kobayashi]

Yoshio Kobayashi is a Japanese font maker. Free fonts by him include Elements Kanji, K's-BarCodeFont-Code39, K's-Floral-Dings, K's-Numeral-Arabic-1, K's-Numeral-Arabic-GC, K's-Numeral-Arabic-GCN, K's-Numeral-Arabic-RC, K's-Numeral-Arabic-RCN, K's-Numeral-Roman-1, K's-Road-Sign-Symbols-J (2001), K's-Japanese-Shogi-Pieces (2001), K's-Snow-Crystals, WeatherJ (2001). Old URL. [Google] [More]  ⦿

K-Type
[Keith Bates]

K-Type is Keith Bates' (b. 1951, Liverpool) foundry in Manchester, UK, est. 2003. Keith works as an Art&Design teacher at a Salford High School. Dafont link. Yet another URL. Fontspace link. Fontsy link. Behance link. They custom design type, and sell some of their own creations.

Commercial faces:

• Adequate (2012). A basic geometric monoline sans family.
• Adventuring (2010, comic book style)
• Alan Hand (2005, based on some blobby lettering, handwritten by printer and mail artist, Alan Brignull)
• Alex (2002-2004)
• Alright (2004, cursive script)
• Anna (2002-2007)
• Axis
• Bank of England (2012, blackletter): Bank of England is loosely based on blackletter lettering from the Series F English twenty pound banknote introduced in 2007. The font also takes inspiration from German Kanzlei (Chancery) typefaces and the 17th century London calligrapher, John Ayres.
• Building&Loan (2007, engaved face)
• Bigfoot (2005, a Western font based on the slab capitals used by Victor Moscoso in his 1960s psychedelic rock posters)
• Bolshy (2009)
• Bolton750 (2003, a mechanical face done with John Washington)
• Chock (2009)
• Circa (geometric sans)
• Club
• Collegiate (2009)
• Component (2012). A font for lost civilizations and dungeon rituals.
• Context (experimental)
• Credit Card (2010, font for simulating bank cards)
• Cyberscript (2006, connected squarish face)
• Designer
• Digitalis
• English
• Excite
• Flip (2011), a western grotesk billboard face.
• Flyer (2009, techno)
• Frank Bellamy (2009, an all-capitals family based on the hand lettering of English artist, Frank Bellamy, most famous for his comic art for Eagle and TV21, and his Dr Who illustrations for Radio Times)
• Future Imperfect
• Gill New Antique (2003)
• Greetings
• Helvetiquette
• Hapshash (2010): an all capitals font inspired by the 1960s psychedelic posters of British designers Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (Michael English and Nigel Waymouth), in particular their 1968 poster for the First International Pop Festival in Rome. A dripping paint font.
• Ivan Zemtsov (2009)
• Kato (2007, oriental simulation face)
• Keith's Hand
• Klee Print (2010, Klee Print is based on the handwriting of American artist Emma Klee)
• Lexia (an improved or "adult" version of Comic Sans) and Lexia Readable (2006).
• Matchbox
• Max
• Ming
• Modernist Stencil (2009)
• Modulario (2010): a contemporary sans.
• New Old English (2010, blackletter)
• Norton (2006)
• Nowa (2004, a play on Futura)
• NYC (octagonal)
• Openline (2008, an art deco pair)
• Oriel Chambers Liverpool: A Lombardic small caps font based on the masonry lettering on Peter Ellis's 1864 building, Oriel Chambers, on Water Street in Liverpool.
• Pentangle (2008, based on album lettering from 1967)
• Pixel
• PixL (2002-2004)
• Plasterboard (2004-2005)
• Pop Cubism (2010) is a set of four texture fonts, combining elements of cubism and pop art.
• Poster Sans
• Rick Griffin (2006, more psychedelic fonts inspired by a 1960s Californian artist)
• Roundel (2009, white on black)
• Runestone (2010, runic).
• Sans Culottes (2008, grunge)
• Serifina
• Solid State (2008, art deco blocks)
• Solus (2004, a revival of Eric Gill's 1929 face Solus which has never been digitized; read about it here)
• Stockscript (2008, down-to-earth script based on the pen lettering of the writer, Christopher Stocks)
• Susanna (2004)
• Ticketing (2011): pixelish.
• Total and Total Eclipse (2004, squarish display faces based on the four characters of Jaroslav Supek's title lettering for his 1980s mailart magazine, Total)
• Transport New (2009: a redrawing of the typeface designed for British road signs. In addition to the familiar Heavy and Medium weights, Transport New extrapolates and adds a previously unreleased Light weight font originally planned for back-lit signage but never actually applied. Originally designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert beginning in 1957, the original Transport font has subtle eccentricities which add to its distinctiveness, and drawing the New version has involved walking a tightrope between impertinently eliminating awkwardness and maintaining idiosyncrasy.)
• Union Jack (octagonal)
• Victor Moscoso (2008, psychedelic)
• Wanda (2007, art nouveau)
• Waverly
• Wes Wilson (2007, psychedelic, inspired by 1960s psychedelic poster artist Wes Wilson)
• 3x5
• Zabars (2001): a Western face.

His free fonts are here:

• Blue Plaque (2006: a distressed font based on English heritage plaques)
• Blundell Sans (2009)
• Celtica (2007) has Celtic influences
• Dalek (2005, stone/chisel face: Dalek is a full font based on the lettering used in the Dalek Book of 1964 and in the Dalek's strip in the TV21 comic, spin-offs from the UK science fiction TV show, Doctor Who. The font has overtones of Phoenician, Greek and Runic alphabets)
• Designer Block (2006)
• Flat Pack (2006)
• Future Imperfect (2006, grunge)
• Gommogravure (2005)
• Greetings (2006), Greetings Bold (2006)
• Insecurity (2005, experimental) won an award at the 2005 FUSE type competition.
• International Times (2006, inspired by the masthead of the International Times underground newspaper of the 1960s and 1970s)
• Keep Calm (2011). Related to London Underground.
• Klee Capscript (2005: based on the handwriting and capitals drawn by artist Emma Klee (USA) for her Color Museum Mail Art invitation. The upper case is based on Emma's capitals and the lower case is freely adapted from her script)
• Lexia and Lexia Bold (2004)
• MAGraphics (2004)
• Magical Mystery Tour (2005, outlined shadow face), Magical Mystery Tour Outline Shadow (2005)
• Mailart (2004), MailartRubberstamp (2004)
• Mandatory (2004, a UK number plate font based on the Charles Wright typeface used in UK vehicle registration plates)
• Ray Johnson (2006-2008)
• Roadway (2005, based on New York roadside lettering).
• Savor (2011). An art nouveau family.
• Soft Sans (2010)
• Subway Ticker (2005)
• This Corrosion (2005)

Custom / corporate typefaces: With Liverpool-based art director Liz Harry, Bates created a personalized font, loosely based on Coco Sumner's handwritten capitals, for the band I Blame Coco. Medium and Semibold weights of Gill New Antique were commissioned by LPK Design Agency. Stepping Hill Hospital and Bates created Dials, a pictorial font to help hospital managers input data about improvements. A custom font was designed for Bolton Strategic Economic Partnership. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

KU Geological Symbol Set

Fonts produced by the University of Kansas, Structure and Tectonics GIS Laboratory, 1998. Only useful with the ESRI Arcview software (Arc/Info). Page maintained by Ross Black. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Kurt Dikkers

Designer of fonts for the National Imagery and Mapping Service, St. Louis, MO. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Laenderkennzeichen

URW Studio font made in 2007. It has the country stickers used on cars in Europe. [Google] [More]  ⦿

lance22

FontStructor who made the dort matrix faces R160 exterior Side (2011, after lettering on NYC subway cars), R160 Find (2011), and NCTA R46 (2011, based on the LCD displays found on the MTA NYC Transit R46 trains). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Larabie Fonts
[Ray Larabie]

Well over 500 original designs by Ray Larabie formerly from from Port Credit/Mississauga, Ontario, but now in Nagoya, Japan. Fontspace link. Dafont link. Abstract Fonts link. Another URL. Another URL. Fontsy link.

Ray Larabie's fonts were originally free. The site was discontinued in the summer of 2001. Ray Larabie started a second life in his new commercial foundry, Typodermic, which opened in the Autumn of 2001.

The following fonts are free: Blue Highway (1996-2011, based on American road signs), Strenuous, Tofu, Electoral Blue, Embargo, Lunaurora, MarqueeMoon, President Gas (nice stencil font), Motorcade, Overload, Baltar (2010), Dignity of Labour (1999), DirtyBakersDozen (1998, military stencil), Mufferaw (2000), Kimberley (2002), Typodermic, Mexcellent (2000, a great triline and 3D face), Minya, PulseState, Quinquefoliate, Yadou, Para-Aminobenzoic, Hydrogen Whiskey, Metal Lord (an Iron Maiden font made in 1996), Golden Girdle, DazzleShips, Kredit, Minisystem, Boron, RiotAct, GlazKrak (1996), SoRunDown (1997; visions of Detroit in 2010), YellowPills, Fake Receipt, Tinsnips, Lucky Ape, Bailey's Car, Icicle Country, Home Sweet Home, Let's Eat, Giant Tigers, RoboKoz, Snidely, Xtra-Flexi-Disc, Fluoride Beings, Field Day Filter, Bramalea Beauty (1998), Braeside Lumberboy (stencil font), Oliver's Barney, Rothwell, Fragile Bombers, Yawnovision, Superheterodyne, Massive Retaliation, Instant Tunes, Neurochrome, Xenowort, Balcony Angels, Neuropol Deluxe, Quadaptor, Deftone Stylus, Lady Starlight, LetterSet, Map of You, First Blind, Larabiefont (monospaced, 1999), Monofonto (monospaced, 1999), Orange kid, Thiamine (1999), Green Fuzz, Gunplay (stencil font), Mail Ray Stuff, Walshes Outline, Mississauga, Union city blue, Carbon Phyber (1999-2009), Carbon Block, Plain Cred, First Blind, Walshes, Credit river, Dendritic Voltage, Neuropolitical, Poke, Port Credit, Lesser Concern, Kustom Kar, Mold Papa, Kleptocracy, Blue Highway D, Hots, Coolvetica, Holy Smokes, Chinese Rocks, sudbury Basin, Lilliput steps, Hurontario, Participants, Adriator (1999), Airmole (2000), Airmole Antique (2000), Ethnocentric, Biting My Nails, Biting Outline, Dyspepsia, Vanilla Whale, Libel Suit, Effloresce, BeatMyGuest, DreamOrphans, EffloresceAntique, EnnobledPet, Euphorigenic, EyeRhyme, GotNoHeart, Hamma Mamma Jamma (1998), Octoville, PlainCred1978, Plasmatic, RadiosinMotionHard, Densmore (a modern stencil font), RadiosinMotion (a morse font), Sexsmith, ShouldveKnown, ShouldveKnownShaded, 20thCenturyFontItalic, Counterscraps, Cretino, , Duality, Echelon (1999, + Italic), Effloresce, Fabian, KenyanCoffee, MinyaNouvelle, OliversBarney, Oil Crisis (2002, car dingbats), SybilGreen (2000), Tork (2000), Degrassi, Vibrocentric, Rafika (stencil font), Berylium, Pakenham, Steelfish, Bullpen, Almonte Woodgrain, Sandoval, Sappy Mugs (2002, mugshots), Colourbars, Unispace, Urkelian (1998), Subpear, Stasmic, StreetCred (1998), Zekton Dots, Vademecum, Vectroid (2000), Zeroes One (1999).

The early commercial fonts at Typodermic included Amienne (2004, brush script), Asterisp (named Aplha through Iota, asterisks, 2000), Bomr (2002), Jillican, Tank (2004, an octagonal face), Telidon Ink and Wyvern. Rare Larabie fonts. Mass download. Direct access to some fonts. Noteworthy is that Neuropol is the font in the official logo of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. Roxio's new Easy Media Creator 7 includes 36 updated Ray Larabie freeware fonts with expanded character sets, kerning, Euro symbol and installable embedding: Arnprior, Baveuse, Berylium, Berylium Bold Italic, Blue Highway (based on the US highway series E font), Blue Highway Condensed, Blue Highway D Type, Blue Highway Bold, Blue Highway Linocut, Burnstown Dam, Carbon Block, Credit Valley (+ B, I,&BI), Earwig Factory, Hurry Up, Kredit, Krystoid, Minya Nouvelle (+ B, I,&BI), Neuropol, Planet Benson 2, Pupcat (unicase), Stereofidelic, Sybil Green (2000, girlish font), Teen (+ B, I, BI, Light, and Light Italic)), Velvenda Cooler, Velvenda MegablackWaker.

Fonts made in 2004-2005: Stentiga (free), Boopee, Zalderdash, First Blind 2, Fenwick Outline, Amienne, Induction, Huxtable, Good Times, Euphorigenic, Neuropolitical, Effloresce, Squealer, Axaxax, Coolvetica, Cretino, Heroid (comic book).

Catalog of the typefaces in the Larabie Fonts collection. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

License Plate Fonts of the United States, Canada, and Mexico
[Ward Nicholson]

Ward Nicholson of Leeward Productions in Wichita, KS, explains many license plate fonts. He also gives a quick rundown of available license plate fonts, as of 2008:

• First USA (Mid-1990s): Brand Design Co./House Industries, discontinued, included for historical interest.
• Garage Gothic (1992): Tobias Frere-Jones, commercial. Three weights. Based on parking garage ticket lettering but very reminiscent of license plate characters.
• Keystone State (1999): Anuthin Wongsunkakon, commercial. One of two fonts in this list based on Pennsylvania's license plate font (see also “Pennsylvania” a littler further below). Keystone State “Relative” (shown immediately below) is a cleaned-up version of the typeface, while the original “Native” style is rougher and more idiosyncratic to realistically replicate the actual plate lettering.
• License Plate (2005): Dave Hansen, free. Replica of Washington state's font, and also similar to font designs of other U.S. states and Canadian provinces that exhibit more “boxy” curves as opposed to oval-shaped ones.
• Misproject (2001): Eduardo Recife, free. Grunge font made from scans of an assortment of license plate characters.
• Motorway (2004): Vic Fieger, free. Semi-grunge font with built-in relief shadow to simulate embossing.
• Penitentiary Gothic (2003): Andrew Leman and Richard Lucas, commercial. Replica of California's font. Five styles including three-dimensional embossing effects. Plain “Fill” weight shown here (embossing effects reproduce well only at larger sizes).
• Pennsylvania (2000): Christian Schwartz, commercial. Based on Pennsylvania's license plate font. Four weights including lowercase plus corresponding small-caps styles, and suitable for use in both text and display. Regular weight shown.
• Plate.fsh (1999): John Arnstrom (aka Zacadeb), free. For use with the Need for Speed: High Stakes auto racing video game for Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Windows.
• SAA Series “A” (1980): designer unknown, digitized by URW staff, commercial. Very similar in design to the various fonts based on oval-shaped curves used by many U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Seven weights, “Series A” shown.
• SNV Extra Condensed (1972): designed by Verein Schweizer Straßenfachmänner foundry, distributed by URW, commercial. Similar to fonts of U.S. states that use straight strokes for the left and right sides of characters that would otherwise be curved, as used by various U.S. and Canadian states. Three weights, Extra Condensed shown.
• Zurich Extra Condensed (1990): Bitstream staff, commercial. A slightly modified clone of Adrian Frutiger's well-known Univers from 1956, utilized by 3M corporation as the basis for the default fonts for its digital license plate system sold to U.S. prisons. Two weights as used by 3M, Extra Condensed shown here.

Logan's Line Art
[Iain Logan]

Iain Logan's company has lots of transportation and railway clip-art and fonts. Typically 4USD for a package of 5 fonts. Typically truetype or Acorn outline fonts. Partial list: BR Headcode Font, US 'Railroad Roman', Signalling Symbols (BS376), Southern Railway Lettering, American Outline Loco's, Passenger and Freight Cars, Timetable Symbols, Transport Pictograms, Transport Route Map Symbols, Teletext Text Characters (BBC Micro Mode 7), Teletext Graphics Characters (BBC Micro Mode 7), Teletext 'Separated' Graphics Characters (BBC Micro Mode 7), Extra Bullet Points, British Sign Language, Underlining Characters, American Outline Loco's, Passenger and Freight Cars Trains, Modern British Loco's Coaches and Wagons Trains, British Loco's Coaches and Wagons, BR Headcode Font, LiNER (A version of Gill Sans in various weights and styles), Track Symbols (BS376), Teletext Text Characters (BBC Micro Mode 7). [Google] [More]  ⦿

LPMCC.net

Designer at FontStruct of Road Signs (2008) and Road Signs 2 (2008), based on the road signs used in the UK. His font had to be split up into many sub-fonts because of the limitations in FontStruct. [Google] [More]  ⦿

machack

A 32MB font zip file with a great starter truetype collection of about 360 fonts. Included are about 60 Bitstream fonts, about 20 Letraset fonts, the 23MB ArialUnicodeMS font (Monotype's complete Arial Unicode font: grab it!!!), about 50 Monotype fonts, about 20 ITC fonts, the Lucida collection, the Proxy family (Autodesk, 1996--truetype versions of a CAD family), Linotype's PalatinoLinotype family (all fonts with full European accents, Cyrillic and Greek), Autodesk's Symeteo, Syastro, Symap, Symath, Txt and Symusic fonts, a few Font Bureau fonts, the Microsoft fonts, and selected goodies. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Macizo.com (or: Macizotype)
[Leonardo Vázquez]

Leonardo Vázquez (Macizotype, Mexico City) is the Mexican designer of Bunker (2005, a monolithic display face, which won an award at the TDC2 2005 type competition. It uses the rounded stone features found in Aztec sculptures and designs. Designer of Señal Mexico (2000, a Mexican highway sign face, with four styles called Rural, Nacional, Mediana and Asfalto), mentioned here. He also made Proteo (2005, sans), Lectura (2007, a text family in Regular, Negro and Versalitas styles), and Libre. Leonardo is a graphic and type designer. After finishing his studies in Mexico City, Leonardo worked in several design studios and advertising agencies. In 1998 he settled in France where he studied in the Atelier National en Recherche Tipographique in Nancy. Leonardo returned to Mexico in 2001, where he works in his own studio macizo.com. Speaker at TypeCon 2007 and at ATypI 2009 in Mexico City. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Magnum Software
[Alex Duncan]

Alex Duncan's page. Commercial symbol and sign fonts, including Credit Card, Ele Grading, Hazard / Warning, Packaging, Recycle, SignFont Fire, SignFont Mandatory, SignFont Safety, SignFont Transport, SignFont Warning, Special Access, Tourism 1a, Tourism 1b, Tourism 2a, Tourism 2b, Tourism 3, Tourism 4a, Tourism 4b, Tourism 5a, Tourism 5b, Tourism 6, Tourism 7, Tourism Grades, Tourism Grades II, Transport Heavy, Transport Medium, all made by Alex Duncan. Magnum UK Ltd is based in Tiverton, UK. Magnum also made the Charles Wright 2001 Mandatory, and Charles Wright 2001 Regular fonts after the UK number plate font that came into effect in September 2001.

Dafont link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Magwerk

Encore magazine. In issues 13 through 18, we find articles by Albert-Jan Pool on the history of DIN typefaces and in particular, FF DIN. Annoying background noise when this site is open. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Manual of Traffic Signs
[Richard C. Moeur]

Traffic signs in the USA, reviewed and surveyed by Richard C. Moeur. He lists the standard sign typefaces used in the USA:

• FHWA Series (A is discontinued, B, C, D, E, E modified and M): n recent years, a practice has developed of referring to these standard typefaces as "Highway Gothic". Series B through F are the standard typefaces used for most signs.
• Clearview, approved for use in 2004.
• Clarendon: used by the National Park Service

Map typography

[More]  ⦿

MapInfo Corporation

Corporation in Troy, NY, who made map and travel symbols in 1995, such as MapInfoShields, Map-Symbols, SPSSMarkerSet, MapInfoArrows, MapInfoCartographic, MapInfoMiscellaneous, MapInfoOil&Gas, MapInfoSymbols, MapInfoRealEstate, MapInfoTransportation, MapInfoWeather. Some can be found here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Mapsymbols.com

Fonts here include DNRRecreationSymbols, DNRRoadSymbols, ParkSymbol (by the US National Park Service), ESRI Miltary dingbat fonts, recreational dingbat fonts by Paul A. Zellmer of the Tongass National Forest, and a goldmine of links to travel and government dingbat fonts. Animal dingbat archive. [Google] [More]  ⦿

MapSymbs.com
[Tom N. Mouat]

British military man (Major) Tom Mouat designed military dingbat fonts. MapSymbs are NATO APP-6 and the new APP-6a military map marking symbols made up as embeddable TrueType Fonts. Free truetype fonts: CIRILICA---B-H, CIRILICA-SS-B-H, LATINICA---B-H, LATINICA-SS-B-H, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnBde, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnBk, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnBn, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnCoy, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnD&C, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnPl, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnRgt, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnSct, Map-Symbol-NATO-EnSqd, Map-Symbol-NATO-Pl, Map-Symbol-NATO-Section, Map-Symbol-NATO-Squad, Map-Symbols-NATO-Army, Map-Symbols-NATO-ArmyGp, Map-Symbols-NATO-Bde&Regt, Map-Symbols-NATO-Bde, Map-Symbols-NATO-Blank, Map-Symbols-NATO-Bn, Map-Symbols-NATO-Corps, Map-Symbols-NATO-Coy, Map-Symbols-NATO-Div&Co, Map-Symbols-NATO-Div, Map-Symbols-NATO-Eqpt, Map-Symbols-NATO-Misc, Map-Symbols-NATO-Misc4716, Map-Symbols-NATO-Pl, Map-Symbols-NATO-Regt, Map-Symbols-NATO-Sect, Map-Symbols-NATO-Squad, MapSym-EN-Air-APP6a, MapSym-EN-Land-APP6a, MapSym-EN-Sea-APP6a, MapSym-FR-Air-APP6a, MapSym-FR-Land-APP6a, MapSym-FR-Sea-APP6a, MapSym-NK-Air-APP6a, MapSym-NK-Land-APP6a, MapSym-NK-Sea-APP6a, MapSym-NU-Air-APP6a, MapSym-NU-Land-APP6a, MapSym-NU-Sea-APP6a, Mapsym--Draft-G5, Mapsym--Engineer, Mapsym--FM101-5-1-Gen, Mapsym--NATO-Logsymb, Mapsym--NATO-Tools, Mapsymbs--German-WW2, Mapsymbs--WD-MapIcons2, Mapsymbs--WD-Napoleonic, Milpics-Generic, Milpics-Generic4716, Miltrain-Generic, NATOKit, Planes-S-Modern, PlanesTModern, SoldierWW2, Space-MarinePersonnel, Specsym, StarWarsKit, Soviet-Kit, Tanks-WW2. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Margaret Calvert

Graphic and type designer (b. 1936, South Africa) and teacher, who after studies at the Chelsea College of Art became the partner of Jock Kinneir in 1964 in Kinneir, Calvert Associates. There, she designed type for signals, highways, the British Rail, airports, hospitals, the army, and the subway.

Designer in FUSE 9 of the experimental font A26 (1994).

She also made TransportD with Jock Kinneir in 1963, a URW++ font.

Monotype Calvert (1980) is a retail Egyptian typeface that was originally used in Newcastle's Tyne & Wear Metro. Ashley Ng (San Francisco) did a great set of advertising posters for MT Calvert in 2012.

She taught at the Royal College of Art in London from 1966, and headed its graphics unit from 1967-1981. She was awarded an honorary degree by the University of the Arts London in 2004.

In 2009, Margaret Calvert and Henrik Kubel designed New Rail Alphabet, a revival of the 1964 British Rail alphabet of Margaret Calvert and Kinneir Calvert Associates.

Wikipedia entry. Linoype link. FontShop link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Marios Zachariadis

Greek designer of the dingbat faces Pictogramz (2009, travel and hotel dingbats), Flamezbymarioz (2006) and Tribalz (2004) available at Dafont. Alternate URL. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Markus Wäger

German photographer and digital artist. He created the (free) severe sans family Lindau (2003), which appears to me as it is based on German car license plates. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Markus Wäger Designwerke
[Markus Wäger]

Austrian photographer and digital artist. Markus Wäger designed the following fonts in 1999: MXCascade, MXJemalCaps, MXJemalItalic, MXJemal, MXOnyx (a MICR font?). DWBeispiel A (1998) is a corporate font. He also created the free fonts Deck Type (2006, unicase) and Lindau (2003), a minimalist severe rounded sans family, apparently (to me, at least) based on German car license plates. See also here. Old URL. Dafont link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Martin Minow

The designer in 1994 of Orienteering Control Description Symbols. Innotech PC IOF Translation. This version, dated 2003, has modifications by H.-J. Fabian. See also here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Metro Bits

Interesting pages about all of the world's metros: their architecture, history, art, logos and fonts. A partial list of famous metro signage fonts:

• Amsterdam: M.O.L. (Gerard Unger, 1974)
• Berlin: Transit (MetaDesign, 1991), based on Frutiger. By Erik Spiekermann, Lucas de Groot, Henning Krause.
• Brussels: Brusseline (Eric de Berranger, 2006)
• Hong Kong: Casey (1996), based on Tahoma and Frutiger. Unknown designer.
• Lisbon: Metrolis (1995, Michael Barbosa, Freda Sack, David Quay)
• London: Johnston (Edward Johnston, 1916)
• Mexico City: Tipo Metro (1969, Lance Wyman)
• Munich: Vialog (2002, Werner Schneider, Helmut Ness)
• Newcastle: Calvert (1980, Margaret Calvert)
• New York: tile fonts by G.C. Heins, C.G. LaFarge and S.J. Vickers, 1901
• Newcastle: Calvert (1980, Margaret Calvert).
• Paris: Metropolitain (1901, Hector Guimard), Alphabet Métro (1973, Frutiger, based on Univers), Parisine (Jean-François Porchez, 1996)
• Prague: Metron (1974, Jiri Rathousky) and Helvetica
• Rotterdam: RET (1984, Henk Van Leyden)
• Seoul: Korail (2003), unknown designer.
• Singapore: LTA Identity Typeface (1980s, Hubert Jocham).
• Toronto: TTC Font (1954, based on Futura)

Metro Type
[Jean-François Porchez]

Article by Jean-François Porchez on typefaces used in the Paris transport system, the RATP. It mainly covers the development of his own Parisine typeface. The time chart:

• Early 1970s: the RATP set up a study group, including Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger. He was asked to design a special variation of his Univers typeface. The variant was introduced in 1973 to replace the twenty alphabets previously in use by the network. The new alphabet was used only when the text needed to be updated or the station renovated. Soon after, around 1973 to 1975, Frutigers Roissy, a preliminary version of the typeface called Frutiger, was created for the new Charles de Gaulle Airport. This time, without historical constraints, he used caps and lowercase instead of the all caps RATP alphabet.
• Early 1990s: The RATP president decided to select from one of the typeface families already in used by the RATP. These included the Adrian Frutiger all-cap face based on Univers, the RER, Albert Botons thin, rounded, all-cap face designed specifically for the new fast Métro in the late seventies, Gill Sans, used in recent years for corporate identity and official communication, and Neue Helvetica, chosen by designer Jean Widmer, which was used for the bus signage system from 1994. Neue Helvetica was selected because of its general availability and compatibility with various computer programmes.
• Late 1990s: Porchez was contacted by the RATP and developed his humanistic Parisine for them.

Mike Blacker

Designer of the dingbats family Leiure Tourism Icons DT (2008, DTP Types). These icons were developed over many years by Mike Blacker of Blacker Design, the icons cover a comprehensive range of leisure, tourism and access themes. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Mike Saelens

Designer for MapInfo Corp of the map symbol font Map Symbols (1995). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Military Symbols and Fonts

Free NATO military truetype fonts. Included are Map-Symbols-NATO-Blank, Map-Symbol-NATO-Pl, Map-Symbols-NATO-Coy, Map-Symbols-NATO-Bn, Map-Symbols-NATO-Regt, Map-Symbols-NATO-Bde, Map-Symbols-NATO-Div&Co, Map-Symbols-NATO-Eqpt, MilSymMod01Normal, MilSymMod02Normal, MilSymbols01Normal, MilSymbols02Normal, MilSymbols03Normal, MilSymbols04Normal, MilSymbols05Normal. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Ministries of Sustainable Resource Mangement and Water, Land&Air Protection

"This directory contains standard symbology for BC Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management (MSRM) data for Workstation ARC/INFO and ArcView. It has been created by the former (MELP) British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands, and Parks Information Services Branch. It is now maintained or updated by MSRM Information Management Branch." The truetype fonts at this site: BCMELPCorSymbols, BCMELPEPDSymbols, BCMELPFisheriesSymbols, BCMELPTrimSymbols, BCMELPWaterSymbols, ESRIIGLFont16, ESRIIGLFont20, ESRIIGLFont22, ESRIIGLFont23, ESRIIGLFont24, ForestryInventoryTextFont25. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Mintea.org
[Andrea Bergamini]

Masters degree student (b. 1983) at the Politecnico di Milano, who specializes in signage, wayfinding and information design. He researches traffic system fonts and typography. His Flickr page has scans of the Italy's Codice della Strada which dictates street type in Italy, and features his world map which shows the origin and the different "routes" taken by the two main typefaces used in world signs: the American Highway Gothic, published by the traffic engineer Ted Forbes in 1945 and the British Transport type by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, published in 1963. He also has photographs of traffic signs. Creator of the free family Flaminia (The League of Movable Type, 2009; see also here).

He writes: 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. These considerations led to the design of Flaminia, a typographical system that allows its users and its future designers to quickly morph (through the use of Multiple Master axes) different variants of the glyphs. By allowing minimal changes of only one variable in the letter shapes, Flaminia also provides a tool to study which are the most relevant factors in the process of reading signs, and can be used free of charge for further researches in this field. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Monotype: Corporate typefaces

The corporate typefaces for which Monotype was contracted include Barclays, British Airways (the Mylius face), The British Council, Chermayeff&Geismar (a particularly ugly and unreadable organic slanted sans), Ogilvy&Mather, Opel (with Greek and Cyrillic, under guidance of Robin Nicholas), Scandinavian Airlines (the typeface is called Scandinavian), Stockholm Transport, The Daily Telegraph, and Waitrose. [Google] [More]  ⦿

New highway sign font in Japan

The old Public Gothic font, which simplified many kanjis on road signs, and which has been in use since 1963, is being replaced in 2010 by the standard iPad font, Hiragino. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Nick Curtis: Underground
[Nick Curtis]

Nick Curtis revived Edward Johnson's Underground (1916) as Under London NF (2011). [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

no image fonts
[Levi Halmos]

Free fonts by Hungarian type and graphic designer Levi Halmos [or: Levente Halmos], made between 1997 and 2001: AlienGhost2, Aliens, Anabolic Spheroid (2001, revived but alas commercialized by Roger S. Nelsson in 2009 as Spheroid Pro), Aztec, Baby Universe (2000), Bateman, Bedlam Remix (2001), Bitsumishi (Bitsumishi Pro (2009) appeared at CheapPro Fonts; Bitsumishi Pro v2 followed in 2012), Butch, Byblostie, CHELIVES, Caddy (1996), CelticGaramond, CelticGaramondthe2nd, Chemistry, Coolthreepixels, Crystal Clear, Danube (techno, geometric), DataTransfer, Dredwerkz, ElephantMan, Escape Pod Normal, FUTURE, Faceplant, Finchley, FreakShow, Gagarin (2001, a Cyrillic simulation and constructivist family), GraveDirt, Guevara, Haiku, Helldorado (2001, Western), Hibernate (2000), Iamsimplified, Indochine (2002, oriental letter simulation), IronLeague (2002, a Jonathan Barnbrook style face), Ivanbats, Ivanhoe, KabosGyula, Kalocsai Flowers Pi (2001), Kenzo, KingKikapu, Kozmonauta (2000), Kozmonauta2, Krizia Uomo (1995, art deco; later renamed Krizi Amo Pro in 2011, probably under pressure from Uomo), Leonardo (1996, a constructed face), Lefferts Corner (2001), LicenzPlate, Lousitania (2001, square-serifed), MagyarSerif, MarshGas, MathmosOriginal, Mutter (a stitch font), Niobium [Niobium Pro (2010, with Roger S. Nelsson) is used for signage and wayfinding in the new Mbombela Stadium built for the FIFA World Cup 2010], Nordic (2001; the Pro version appeared in 2010), Nushto, Olympus (Greek simulation face), Peex (dot matrix family), Phatguy, PiratesGold (made commercial in the CheapProFonts collection of Roger S. Nelsson in 2009), Poison Berries (2000), PresidenteTequila (2000), RakettaFromMars (2001, fifties style futurism), Rammstein, RammsteinRemix (2001, constructivist), RedheadGoddess (2000), RedwildoderRotwild, Resurrection, Runningshoe, Sarkozi Line Patterns Pi (2001), Scully (scanbats), ScumoftheEarth (2000), Shazbot, Slither, SmartSexy, SmartandSexy, Snake Venom (2000, Mexican simulation face), SpaceWorm (2000, futuristic), Sporty, Stonebridge, Subatonik, Sulphur (2000, a face influenced by gothic cathedrals), Tank Junior (2001), TerraX, Thrust (2000, Star Trek face), TickyFont, Treasure Island (2001, rounded with a semi-Greek look), TrustThisOne, TwoGunJohann (2000), TypeKnight (2001, with hairline serifs), VicePresidente (2001, Mexican simulation face), VoodooDolls, Voodoo Spirits (2001, wiggly hand), WeepingItalic, WhoulNormal, Zombieball.

Myfonts link. Roger S. Nelsson (Cheapprofonts) and Halmos extended Danube and Celtic Garamond in 2009 as Danube Pro and Celtic Garamond Pro, respectively. Fontspace link. Font Squirrel link. Dafont link.

View Levi Halmos's commercial typefaces. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

NRCS Map Symbols

Free truetype fonts with map symbols: NRCSPlanning, NRCSSSURGO, NRCSADHOC (1999). NRCS is the Natural Resource and Conservation Service. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Oklahoma Department of Transportation

The two free truetype fonts found here (Font-10 and Font-23) prove that Oklahoma has a long way to go in its design of roadway sign symbol typefaces. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Olivia Nepi

An ex-student of the IUAV in Venezia, where she wrote a thesis on road signage. At ATypI in Rome in 2002, she almost spoke about road signs and pictograms but her talk was canceled to to the birth of her child. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Open DIN

A project started by Open source supporters in Belgium (Pierre Huyghebaert, Harrisson, Philip May, Nicolas Maleve and Femke Snelting) and executed by Paulo Silva in Portugal in the form of the free typeface OpenDinSchriftenEngshrift (2009), which is based on the master drawing of DIN for the Prussian Railways.

They state: In the coming year, we will be working on a new digital rendering of the classic DIN font with the aim to release it in the public domain. We chose DIN (often referred to as "the German Autobahn typeface") as a starting point for a few reasons. First of all, because it is one of the rare typefaces that was released into the public domain from the moment it was designed in 1932. While the original drawings remain freely available, various type foundries have copyrighted digital renderings (such as FontShop's FF DIN). Secondly because its particular history brings up many questions about standards, their political implications and relations to use. In 1936 the German Standard Committee decided DIN should be employed in technology, traffic, administration, and business, with the idea to facilitate the development of German engineering and industry. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Open Source Publishing (or: OSP)
[Harrisson]

Free software project based in Belgium and run by four people (and I quote from their web page):

• Harrisson: Graphic designer and typographer, based in Liege and Brussels. Started to use as much Open Source software as possible on his Macintosh, as part of a research project The Tomorrow Book at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.
• Pierre Huyghebaert: Exploring for eighteen years several practices around graphic design, he currently drives his own studio Speculoos. Interested to use free sofware to re-learn to work in others way and collaboratively on cartography, type design, web interface, schematic illustration, teaching and book design.
• Nicolas Malevé: Systems- and software developer from Brussels with a long interest in the politics and practice of software. Uses Linux since 1998 and makes publishing- and distribution systems for collaborative work.
• Femke Snelting: Graphic designer and artist based in Brussels. Most of her current work is for the web. Recently switched to Linux after using Apple Macintosh for more than ten years.

• Alfphabet (2009). Based on the Belgian road signage system in use from 1945-1975. It came from Minneapolis to Brussels with 3M.
• Broodthaers.
• Cimatics (2009). Totally experimental. This font was designed in July 2009, for the graphic identity of Cimatics A\V Platform. It gathers glyphs from FreeSerif, FreeSerifItalic, DejaVuSans, DejaVuSerif, the OSP_frog mascot, the Cimatics two piece heart, a baronchon_palm_tree from Open Clip Art Library and private use dingbats drawn for Cimatics (Cimatics_scare_eye, white_pentagon).
• Crickx. A digital reinterpretation of a set of adhesive letters.
• Distilled Spirit and Whisky Jazz. In September 2009, Harrisson and Jean Baptiste Parre from LPDME remixed URW Gothic (Avant Garde) and published the free fonts Distilled Spirit and Whisky Jazz.
• DLF. DLF stands for Dingbats Liberation Fest.
• Libertinage. In August 2008, Harrisson designed 26 variations on Philipp H. Poll's 2006 font Libertine, and called the new family Libertinage.
• Limousine. This font was made for a poster to support nine people accused of "criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity". They were arrested the 11th of November 2008, in France. They and others are the victims of a witch-hunt where the word "terrorism" was applied to any idea or practice which challenges the status quo. An international movement is emerging in their support. For the poster, we re-mixed an open font, the Free Sans from Free UCS Outline Fonts.
• Logisoso. Logisoso is a reinterpretation of the Delhaize logo lettering.
• NotCourierSans. NotCourierSans is a reinterpretation of Nimbus Mono and was designed in Wroclaw at the occasion of Linux Graphics Meeting (LGM 2008). We took Nimbus as the base of the design. We proceeded to remove the serifs with raw cuts. We did not soften the edges. We are not here to be polite.
• OSP-DIN (2009). The first cut of OSP-DIN was drawn for the festival Cinema du réel.
• Polsku Regula (2010). Polsku Regula is inspired by polish signage, street signs and shop windows lettering.
• Reglo (2011) was used for the new identity of Radio Panik.
• Sans Guilt (2011). The three Sans Guilt fonts have been produced during "Read The Fucking Manual", an OSP workshop at Deparment 21 (Royal College of Art), using Gimp, Fonzie and Fontforge. They are different versions of Gill Sans based on three different sources. Sans Guilt MB: based on a rasterized pdf made with the Monotype Gill Sans delivered with Mac OSX. Sans Guilt DB: Based on early sketches by Eric Gill Sans Guilt LB: Based on lead type from Royal College of Arts letterpress workshop.
• Univers Else (2010-2012). A geometric sans, about which they write: Different scans were assembled by Grégoire Vigneron following different grids. These huge bitmaps were processed with appropriate potrace settings by the Fonzie software* through a .ufo font format as a working format, and an OpenType as output. Some testing and fine-tuning was done by Pierre Marchand, Delphine Platteeuw and Pierre Huyghebaert in FontForge and the font was ready, in a finished state enough to typeset the book. The oblique versions was simply slanted on the fly.
• VJ12 (2009).
• W Droge. In 2008, they ran a workshop in Wroclaw, Poland, to design a font in a day with the free tools Inkscape, Gimp and FontForge---called W Droge. It was based on Polish traffic signs. Cooperation with Dave Crossland, Alexandre Prokoudine and Nicolas Spalinger.

Otto M. Vondrak

Designer at RailFonts, who hails from Westchester County, New York, and has been interested in model trains and railroading since age five. Otto attended Rochester Institute of Technology where he received his BFA in Graphic Design. While at RIT, he founded the RIT Model Railroad Club, and has been an active volunteer with the Rochester Chapter NRHS, and the New York Museum of Transportation. Since leaving Rochester, he moved back to Westchester where he is currently production manager for Hudson Valley Magazine, and designer for Westchester Magazine. Otto is also a partner in the popular railfan web site RAILROAD.NET, where he is Creative Director. Many of his articles, track plans and illustrations have appeared in Railroad Model Craftsman over the years, and he is also a regular contributor to Railpace News magazine. In his free time, Otto is a leader for his local Boy Scout troop, and enjoys camping and the outdoors. His railroad-related fonts: JadeGreen (compare to the lettering once used by Penn Central), Consolidated (compare to the lettering once used by Conrail). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Page Studio Graphics (or: Pixymbols)
[Roger Vershen]

Page Studio Graphics is Roger Vershen's Oro Valley, AZ-based company specializing in symbols and symbol fonts, founded by him in 1986. Roger Vershen died in Tucson, AZ, in 2003.

The fonts (grouped under the name PIXymbols) include ADA symbols v.2.0, Africa, Alphabox, Alphacircle, Ameslan (ASL), Antorff (blackletter), Antorff Fractions, Apothecary, Arrows, Astrology, Backstitich, Boxkey, BoxNLines, Braille grade 2, Casual, Chalk Casual, PIXymbols Chess, Command Key, Courex (typewriter family), Crossword, Digit&Clocks (+LED symbols), Dingbats&Online, DOSScreen, Fabric Care, FARmarks (Federal Aviation Regulations lettering), Flagman (semaphore), Fractions, Gridmaker, Highway Gothic (U.S. Department of Transportation's Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs), PIXymbols Highway Gothic 2002, Highway Signs (U.S. Department of Transportation), Hospital&Safety, LCD, Luna, Malkoff (calligraphic font), Marina, Meeting, Menufonts, Morse, Musica (instruments), Newsdots, Orchestra, Passkey, Patchwork, PCx, Phone, PIXymbolsMusica, PrimerD (letters with lines), Recycle, Roadsigns, Shadowkey, Signet (family), Squared, Strings, Stylekey, Tolerances&Datum, Travel&Hotel, TV List, Unikey, US Map, Vershen (2001), Xcharting, Xstitch. They also sell EPS files of all Arms of Swiss cantons, and many nice initial caps. Look also for Faux Hebrew (simulated Hebrew), as part of the Faux package that also includes Faux Sanskrit, Faux Runic, Faux Hebrew, Faux Japanese, Faux Arabic, Faux Chinese and Faux Chinese Sans.

Alternate URL. Previews at MyFonts. Klingspor link.

View the Page Studio Graphics typeface library. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Patrick Griffin

Type designer at Canada Type. Wikipedia tells us that Patrick Griffin had been locked away in a mental institution by Carter and Barbara, after he walked in on his mother performing oral sex on Jackie Gleason. He had a nervous breakdown and was sent to a mental hospital, where he came to the conclusion that Gleason was evil because he was fat, leading him to hate fat people. His work is summarized in this 2009 interview by MyFonts. It includes lots of custom work for banks, TV stations, and companies/groups like New York Times, Pixar, Jacquin's, University of Toronto, and the Montreal Airport. His retail fonts include the following.

• Ambassador Script (2007): a digital version of Juliet, Aldo Novarese's 1955 almost upright calligraphic (copperplate style) connected script, with hundreds of alternates, swashes, ends, and so forth. Done with Rebecca Alaccari.
• Autobats (2005).
• Bigfoot (2008), the fattest font ever made (sic).
• Blackhaus (2005), an extension of Kursachsen Auszeichnung, a blackletter face designed in 1937 by Peterpaul Weiß for the Schriftguss foundry in Dresden.
• Blanchard (2009): a revival and elaborate extension of Muriel, a 1950 metal script face made by Blanchard Trochut for the Fonderie Typographique Française, that was published simultaneously by the Spanish Gans foundry under the name Juventud.
• Bluebeard (2004), a blackletter face.
• Book Jacket (2010): this is a digital extension of the film type font Book Jacket by Ursula Suess, published in 1972.
• Boondock (2005): a revival of Imre Reiner's brush script face Bazaar from 1956.
• Broken (2006): grunge.
• Caper or Caper Comic (2008): a 4-style comic book family.
• Captain Comic (2007).
• Chalice (2006). Religious and cyrillic influences.
• Chapter 11 (2009): an old typewriter face.
• Chikita (2008): an upright ronde script done with Rebecca Alaccari, and rooted in the work of 1930s Dutch lettering artist Martin Meijer.
• Clarendon Text (2007). A 20-style slab serif that uses inspiration from 1953 faces by Hoffmann and Eidenbenz and the 1995 font Egizio by Novarese.
• Classic Comic (2010).
• Coconut and Coconut Shadow (2006). Great techno pop faces.
• Coffee Script (2004): the digital version of R. Middleton's Wave design for the Ludlow foundry, circa 1962. Designed with Phil Rutter.
• Collector Comic (2006). A comic balloon lettering family.
• Counter (2008): A futuristic beauty with a double-lined cursive thrown in. Available exclusively from P22. This face was based on the idea for an uncredited film face called Whitley, published by a little known English typesetting house in the early 1970s.
• Cryptozoo (2009): Late director of design for VANOC, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Committee, Leo Ostbaum, commissioned Canada Type to make a typeface for the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Patrick Griffin came up with a rounded signage font called Cryptozoo, whose Notice reads Concept and design by Leo Obstbaum, VANOC Brand & Creative Services. Additional character data and technical production by Canada Type. Copyright 2007 VANOC Brand&Creative Services.
• Dancebats (2004).
• Dominion (2006). Based on an early 1970s film type called Lampoon. Dominions severely geometric shapes are a strange cross between early Bauhaus minimalism and later sharp square faces used for instance in Soviet propaganda posters.
• Doobie (2006). 60s psychedelic style.
• Driver Gothic (2008): based on the typeface used for Ontario license plates. Although unique among Canadian provincial license plates, this face is very similar to, if not outright identical with, the face used on car plates in 22 American states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. Ideal for license plate forgers.
• Expo (2004): an octagonal family.
• Fab (2007). A tube-design family reminiscent of the 1980s. Ricardo Cordoba writes: Fab reminds me of leafing through my first Letraset catalog in the mid-1980s all those decorative typefaces with rounded ends and tubular shapes, trying to imitate the look of neon signage. But Fab, with its contemporary twist on that aesthetic, and its unicase characters, manages to look like a cross between Cholla Bold and Frankfurter Highlight. Its handtooled, narrow shapes are perfectly suited to pop subject matter and bright colors. Fab Trio can be used to create layered chromatic effects, but its components can stand alone, too. The Seventies sure aint drab in Patrick Griffin's hands.
• Fantini (2006). An update of the curly art nouveau face Fantan, a film type from 1970 by Custom Headings International.
• Fido (2009) is the official font of dog owners everywhere. Has Saul Bass influences.
• Filmotype Alice (2008): a casual handprinted design based on a 1958 alpohabet by Filmotype.
• Filmotype Brooklyn (2009): a casual script based on a 1958 Filmotype font.
• Filmotype Jessy (2009): a flowing upright connected script based on a 19058 design by Filmotype.
• Filmotype Giant (2011, a condensed sans) and its italic counterpart, Filmotype Escort (2011). Both done with Rebecca Alaccari.
• Filmotype LaSalle (2008): based on a 1952 retro script by Ray Baker for Filmotype. Other Filmotype faces by Ray Baker (digitized in 2011) include Filmotype Harmony (original from 1950), Filmotype Kentucky (a 1955 original), Filmotype Kingston (a 1953 original), Filmotype Lucky (2012), and Filmotype Hamlet (a 1955 original), all in the connected signage type category, and all done by Patrick Griffin and Rebecca Alaccari. Filmotype Panama (2012) is a flared casual serif face based on a 1958 original. Filmotype Prima (2011, with Rebecca Alaccari).
• Filmotype Quiet (2010): based on a 1954 military stencil face by Filmotype.
• Flirt (2005). Based on an art deco face found in a Dover specimen book.
• Fuckbats (2007).
• Fury (2008): an angry techno family.
• Gala (2005). By Griffin and Alaccari. Gala is the digitization of the one of the most important Italian typefaces of the twentieth century: G. da Milanos 1935 Neon design for the Nebiolo foundry. This designs importance is in being the predecessor - and perhaps direct ancestor - of Aldo Novareses Microgramma (and later Eurostile), which paved the worlds way to the gentle transitional, futuristic look we now know and see everywhere. It is also one of the very first designs made under the direction of Alessandro Butti, a very important figure in Italian design.
• Gallery (2004): art deco.
• Gamer (2--4-2006), by Griffin and Alaccari: modeled after a few 1972 magazine advertisement letters, the origin of which was later identified as a common film type called Checkmate.
• Gaslon (2005): a modification of A. Bihari's Corvina Black from 1973.
• Gator (2007). A digital version of Friedrich Poppl's Poppl Heavy (1972), which in turn was one of the many responses by type designers to Cooper Black.
• Genie (2006): a psychedlic face based on a 1970s film type called Jefferson Aeroplane.
• Gibson (2011, with Kevin King and Rod McDonald). This 8-style humanist sans family is a revival of McDonald's own Monotype face, Slate. It was named to honour John Gibson FGDC (1928-2011), Rod's long-time friend and one of the original founders of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. All the revenues from its sale will be donated by Canada Type to the GDC, where they will be allocated to a variety of programs aiming to improve the creative arts and elevate design education in Canada.
• Go (2005): a techno face.
• Goudy Two Shoes (2006): a digitization and expansion of a 1970s type called Goudy Fancy, which originated with Lettergraphics as a film type.
• Gumball (2005).
• Hamlet (2006): medieval. Based on an old type called Kitterland.
• Happy (2005). Happy is the digital version of one the most whimsical takes on typewriters ever made, an early 1970s Tony Stan film type called Ap-Ap. Some of the original characters were replaced with more fitting ones, but the original ones are still accessible as alternates within the font. We also made italics and bolds to make you Happy-er.
• Heathen (2005). A grunge calligraphic script: The original Heathen was made by redrawing Phil Martin's Polonaise majuscules and superposing them over the majuscules of Scroll, another Canada Type font. The lowercase is a superposition of Scrolls lowercase atop a pre-release version of Sterling Script, yet another Canada Type font.
• Hortensia (2009): a semi-script face modeled after Emil Gursch's Hortensia (1900). Codesigned with Rebecca Alaccari.
• Hunter (2005). A revival of a brush script by Imre Reiner called Mustang (1956).
• Hydrogen (2007, a rounded geometric unicase family.
• Informa (2009): a comprehensive 36-style sans serif text family based on traditional lettering. He says: While some faces classified as such exhibit too much calligraphy (like Gill Sans, Syntax and Optima), and others tend to favor geometric principles in rhythm and proportion (like Agenda, Frutiger and Myriad), Informa stays true to the humanist ideology by maintaining the proper equilibrium between the two influences that drive the genre, and keeping the humanistic traits where they make better visual sense.
• Jackpot (2005): The idea for Jackpot came from a photo type called Cooper Playbill, which as the name implies was simply a westernized version of Cooper Black. The recipe was simple: Follow Mr. Coopers big fat hippy idea, cowboy it with heavy slabs, give it true italics, then swash away at both for beautiful mixture. And there you have the bridge between groovy and all-American. There you have the country lover shaking hands with the rock and roll enthusiast. There you have your perfect substitute for the very overused Cooper Black.
• Jazz Gothic (2005): an expansion of an early 1970s film type from Franklin Photolettering called Pinto Flare.
• Jezebel (2007).
• Johnny (2006): with Rebecca Alaccari; based on Phil Martin's Harem or Margit fonts from 1969.
• Jupiter (2007): based on Roman lettering.
• Leather (2005): an expansion of Imre Reiner's blackletter face Gotika (1933).
• Libertine (2011). Libertine (done with Kevin Allan King) is an angular calligraphic script inspired by the work of Dutchman Martin Meijer (1930s): This is the rebel yell, the adrenaline of scripts.
• Lionheart (2006). A digitization and extension of Friedrich Poppl's neo-gothic typeface Saladin.
• Lipstick (2006): handwriting.
• Louis (2012). A faithful digital rendition and expansion of a design called Fanfare, originally drawn by Louis Oppenheim in 1927, and redrawn in 1993 by Rod McDonald as Stylu.
• Maestro (2009) is a 40 style chancery family, in 2 weights each, with 3350 characters per font, codesigned with calligrapher Philip Bouwsma. This has to be the largest chancery/calligraphy family on earth.
• Martie (2006). Done with Rebecca Alaccari. Based on the handwriting of Martie S. Byrd.
• Marvin (2010): a fat comic book face.
• Memoriam (2009): An extreme-contrast vogue display script which was commissioned by art director Nancy Harris for the cover of the 2008 commemorative issue of the New York Times magazine. He also did the typography and fonts for the 2010 issue. This became an unbelievably successful family, and was extended in 2011 with headline, Outline and Iline variants.
• Merc (2007). Based on an all-cap rough-brush metal face called Agitator, designed by Wolfgang Eickhoff and published by Typoart in 1960.
• Messenger (2010), a calligraphic script. Patrick Griffin writes about Messenger (2010, Canada Type): Messenger is a redux of two mid-1970s Markus Low designs: Markus Roman, an upright calligraphic face, and Ingrid, a popular typositor-era script. Through the original film faces were a couple of years apart and carried different names, they essentially had the same kind of Roman/Italic relationship two members of the same typeface family would have. The forms of both faces were reworked and updated to fit in the Ingrid mold, which is the truer-to-calligraphy one.
• Middleton Brush (2010): a redigitization of R.H. Middleton's connected brush face Wave, ca. 1962; see also an early Canada Type face, Coffee Script.
• Miedinger (2007). Created after Max Miedinger's 1964 face, Horizontal. Canada Type writes: The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces a new lighter weight alongside the bold original..
• Militia (2007). An octagonal and threatening stencil.
• Militia Sans (2007).
• Neil Bold (2010): an extension of the fat face Neil Bold (1966, Wayne J. Stettler).
• Nightlife (2005): inspired by a pre-desktop publishing grid design by L. Meuffels.
• Nuke (2005): a fat stencil grunge weith pizzazz.
• In 2011, he and Kevin Allan King published the refined Orpheus Pro family, which was based on the elegant Orpheus by Walter Tiemann (1926-1928, Klingspor), and its Italic which was called Euphorion (Walter Tiemann, 1936). Their enthusiastic description: The Orpheus Pro fonts started out as a straightforward revival of Tiemann's Orpheus and Euphorion. It was as simple as a work brief can be. But did we ever get carried away, and what should have been finished in a few weeks ended up consuming the best part of a year, countless jugs of coffee, and the merciless scrutiny of too many pairs of eyeballs. The great roman caps just screamed for plenty of extensions, alternates, swashes, ligatures, fusions from different times, and of course small caps. The roman lowercase wanted additional alternates and even a few ligatures. The italic needed to get the same treatment for its lowercase that Tiemann envisioned for the uppercase. So the lowercase went overboard plenty alternates and swashes and ligatures. Even the italic uppercase was augmented by maybe too many extra letters. Orpheus Pro has been a real ride. Images of Orpheus: i, ii, iii, iv, v.
• Outcast (2010): a grunge family.
• Oxygen (2006): a great grid-based design.
• Paganini (with Kevin Allan King) is another jewel in Canada Type's drawers: Designed in 1928 by Alessandro Butti under the direction of Raffaello Bertieri for the Nebiolo foundry, Paganini defies standard categorization. While it definitely is a classic foundry text face with obvious roots in the oldstyle of the Italian renaissance, its contrast reveals a clear underlying modern influence. i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii.
• Player (2007). An 11-style athletic lettering family.
• Plywood (2007): a retro face based on Franklin Typefounders's Barker Flare from the early 1970s.
• Press Gothic (2007). A revival of Aldo Novarese's Metropol typeface, released by Nebiolo in 1967 as a competitor to Stephenson Blakes Impact.
• Quanta (2005, stencil).
• In 2011, Patrick Allan King and Patrick Griffin completed work on an exceptionally beautiful revival, Ratio Modern (the original by F.W. Kleukens is from 1923). This is a didone family with a refined humanistic trait. Images of Ratio Modern: i, ii, ii, iv, v, vi, vii.
• Rawhide (2006): a bouncy Western saloon font based on cover page lettering of the Belgian comic book series Lucky Luke.
• Recta (2011, with Kevin King). This is eighteen-stye sans family that extends Novarese's Recta.
• Rhino (2005): a revival of the informal face Mobil (1960, Helmu Matheis, Ludwig&Mayer).
• Noteworthy (2009). A font commissioned for the Apple iPad. It is based on Griffin's earlier revival face Filmotype Brooklyn.
• Ronaldson (2008), a 17-style oldstyle family based on the 1884 classic by Alexander Kay, Ronaldson Old style (MacKellar, Smith&jordan). Done with Alaccari, Griffin reconstructed this family from the metal face and from many scans from rare documents provided by Stephen O. Saxe, Philippe Chaurize and Rebecca Davis.
• Roos (2009): A 10-style revival of Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos's De Roos Romein (1948), created in cooperation with Hans van Maanen.
• Robur (2010): Done with Kevin King, this set of two fonts revives George Auriol's Robur Noir from 1909.
• Runway (2004): racetrack lettering.
• Rush (2005): futuristic.
• Sailor (2005): digital rendition of West Futura Casual (late 1970s film type).
• Salome (2008). Done with Rebecca Alaccari, this is a revival and expansion of a photolettering era typeface called Cantini (1972, Letter Graphics).
• Santini (2004): Bauhaus-inspired architectural lettering.
• Screener (2006): an extensive octagonal family, including Screener Symbols.
• Secret Scrypt (2004): four shaky script styles done for a New York restaurant. With Alaccari.
• Semplicita Pro (2011). A grand revival of Alessandro Butti's Futura-like Semplicità, executed between 2009 and 2011 by Patrick Griffin and Bill Troop. Image of the Medium weight.
• Shred (2010): an octagonal heavy metal face.
• Siren Script (2009-2010): Done with Rebecca Alaccari, this six-style script family is based on the metal face Stationers Semiscript (BBS, 1899).
• Skullbats (2005).
• Serial Killer (2005): bloody.
• Slang (2004): a blood scratch face.
• Slinger (2010): a flared art nouveau face.
• Social Gothic (2007). After Tom Hollingsworth's Informal Gothic, a squarish unicase grotesk done in 1965. Followed by Social Stencil (2011-2012).
• Soft Press (2012). A rounded version of Canada Type's Press Gothic.
• Sol Pro (2010): a 20-style revival and extension of the monoline sans face Sol by Marty Goldstein and C.B. Smith (1973, VGC), done with Kevin Allan King. Griffin writes: This is not your grandfather's Eurostile. This is your offspring's global hope, optimism, and total awareness.
• Spade (2012). A super-heavy slab face, done with Kevin King.
• Spadina (2010): a psychedelic / art nouveau revival with Kevin Allan King of Karlo Wagner's Fortunata (1971, Berthold).
• Sterling Script (2005): done with Rebecca Alaccari. Sterling Script was initially meant to a be digitization/reinterpretation of a copperplate script widely used during what effectively became the last decade of metal type: Stephenson Blake's Youthline, from 1952. Many alternates were added, so this is a virtually new type family.
• Sultan: a Celtic-Arabic simulation face after "Mosaik" (1954) by Martin Kausche.
• Stretto (2008) is a revival and expansion of Sintex 1 (Aldo Novarese, Nebiolo, 1973), a funky nightclub face. It was used as the basis of Cowboy Hippie (2010, CheapProFonts).
• Swan Song (2006): a calligraphic face based on the hand of Alexander Nesbitt. [A later document states that it is based on work by British artist Rachel Yallop.]
• Symposium Pro (2011). This Carolingian family was drawn by Philip Bouwsma. Patrick helped with the production.
• Taboo (2009) is a geometric display face that was inspired by lettering by Armenian artist Fred Africkian in 1984.
• Testament (2010): a calligraphic uncial family done with Philip Bouwsma.
• Tomato (2005): done with Rebecca Alaccari, this is the digitization and quite elaborate expansion of an early 1970s Franklin Photolettering film type called Viola Flare.
• Treasury (2006): a huge type family based on a calligraphic script by Hermann Ihlenburg from the late 19th century. Canada Type writes: The Treasury script waited over 130 years to be digitized, and the Canada Type crew is very proud to have done the honors. And then some. After seven months of meticulous work on some of the most fascinating letter forms ever made, we can easily say that Treasury is the most ambitious, educational and enjoyable type journey we've embarked upon, and we're certain you will be quite happy with the results. Treasury goes beyond being a mere revival of a typeface. Though the original Treasury script is quite breathtaking in its own right, we decided to bring it into the computer age with much more style and functionality than just another lost script becoming digital. The Treasury System is an intuitive set of fonts that takes advantage of the most commonly used feature of todays design software: Layering.
• Trump Gothic (2005): a revival and expansion of two different takes on Signum (1955, Weber), Georg Trumps popular mid-twentieth-century condensed gothic: Less than one year after Signum, the Czech foundry Grafotechna released Stanislav Marso's Kamene, a reinterpretation of Signum. The differences between the two were quite subtle in most forms, but functionally proved to offer different levels of visual flexibility. Marso changed a few letters, most notably the wonderful a and g he added, and also made a bold weight. Trump Gothic West is a revival of Trump's original Signum, but in three weights and italics for each. Trump Gothic East is a revival of Marso's Kamene, but also in three weights and corresponding italics..
• Trump Script (2010) revives the African look script by Georg Trump called Jaguar (1962). An improvement on an earlier Canada type family called Tiger Script.
• Tuba (2010).
• Valet (2006): inspired by an uncredited early 1970s all-cap film type called Expression.
• Veronica Polly (2005).
• Vox (2007): a 24-style monoline sans family done with Rebecca Alaccari.
• Wagner Grotesk (2010): a sturdy grotesk, after a face from the Johannes Wagner foundry. Kevin King is also credited.
• Wagner Script Pro (2011). Done together with Kevin King, this is a revival of Troubadour (1926, Wagner&Schmidt).
• King and Patrick Griffin published Wonder Brush in 2012. This is partly based on a signage brush script called Poppl Stretto (1969) by Friedrich Poppl.
• Opentype programming help for several fonts by Michael Doret, such as Deliscript (2009), Dynascript (2011) and Steinweiss Script (2010). Deliscript (a winner at TDC2 2010) is an upright connected script with accompanying slanted version. Steinweiss Script is a 2200-glyph curly script face called Steinweiss Script (2010), which captures a lot of the spirit of Steinweiss's album covers from the late 1930s and 1940s.

Paulo Silva

Portuguese type designer in Porto, b. 1972, who created NewBodonesque (2004-2005) as part of Pedro Amado's Typeforge open source font project. Creator of Gentesque (2009), an Open Font Library family based on a scan of the Gentium family. Aka Nitrofurano. Also in 2009, he and others started work on OpenDinSchriftenEngshrift, an open source typeface that is as close as possible to the original DIN font done for the Prussian Railways. It was made with open source tools such as Inkscape and FontForge. One download site. And another one. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Philip Tagg

Philip Tagg from the Faculty of Music at the University of Montreal has these fonts on his page: Athenian, Cyrillic, CyrillicBold-Italic, CyrillicBold, CyrillicNormal-Italic, MSReference1, MSReference2, SILDoulosIPA, SILManuscriptIPA, SILSophiaIPA, Translit98, Translit98Bold, Translit98BoldItalic, Translit98Italic, Treefrog, Webdings, GeographicSymbols-Normal, Keypunch-Normal, Keystroke-Normal, Kids-Normal. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Pixelspread
[Matt McInerney]

Graphic designer currently working at Pentagram Design in New York. He graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, and is originally from Western Massachusetts. At the Typesites page, Matt McInerney looks at sites that have great typographic design. He created Raleway (2009, a free hairline sans), New Alphabet (2008), an octagonal font based on Wim Crouwel's New Alphabet, using FontStruct. (For a commercial version of New Alphabet, check Architype New Alphabet (The Foundry). He also made Pentagrid (2009, on a 5x5 grid).

Orbitron (2009) is a great free futuristic sans family published at The League of Movable Type: it is a geometric sans related to both Eurostile and Bank Gothic. Romina Vespasiano made a great specimen poster for Orbitron in 2012.

Allerta (+Stencil) (2010) is an open source typeface designed for use in signage. Allerta was designed to be easily and quickly read from a distance. Each letter exploits the most unique aspects of that individual letter so that each character can be easily distinguished from any other.

Google Directory link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Portuguese Traffic Typefaces
[Joao Neves]

Joao Neves (Ourem, Portugal) lists and shows the Portuguese traffic typefaces from 1954, 1959, 1994 and 1998. In 1954 and 1959, they used the JAE font where JAE stands for Junta Autónoma des Estradas. Later, starting in 1994, they adapted and adopted the UK's Transport typeface. At Behance, he showed his monoline circular-arc based face Ball Kaps (2011). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Quadrat Communications
[David Vereschagin]

Born in Edmonton in 1957, David Vereschagin set up Quadrat Communications in Toronto (Quadrat Communications, 18 Grenville Street, Suite 1501, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 3B3). A graphic designer by profession, he has made a number of carefully crafted font families such as Spike, Ratcaps (free keycaps sample font available), MyAuntCelia, Farquharson, Clear Prairie Ornaments (1992), Clear Prairie Dawn. A free copy of Farquhason is here.

At MyFonts, one can buy Clear Prairie Dawn (Optima-like), Clear Prairie Ornaments, Farquharson (like wood type), My Aunt Celia, Ratcaps, Ratkeys, Spike, Toronto Subway (2004: based on the lettering originally used for station identification and signage in the Toronto subway system, which first opened to the public in 1954. Developed from rubbings of the lettering on station walls and photographs of painted signage.) In 2008, he designed the cool constructivist poster family Kubrick, about the same time as Iconian Fonts' Kubrick family---I hope that they can settle the naming fight amicably. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

R160signage

FontStructor who made R160 Interior (2011), a dot matrix face that is based on an LED face used in the R160 MTA NYCT subway cars. He also made R160 Int Resize (2011), R160 Exterior (2011), R142 Interior (2011, a grid face based on actual R142 font. Used on New York City Transit Subway cars) and R142A (2011, a dot matrix face used on the R142/A MTA NYCT subway cars. It is the interior LED sign). [Google] [More]  ⦿

RailFonts.com
[Benn Coifman]

Benn Coifman's site specializes in commercial railroad train and train lettering fonts. Also included (for free) are a crossword font, a population font, a car font, and a cartography font, all designed by Ben. Check RoadSign, a complete collection of US road signs. He also has a 1940s automobile font, the text font Rio Grande (1998) and a WWII plane font. Benn is an electrical engineering professor at Ohio State. He also made the BankGothic lookalikes Gotthard and Zephyr. Other designers at RailFonts are Clifford J. Vander Yacht and Otto M. Vondrak. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Ralf Herrmann
[Ralf Herrmann]

See also here for more news by Ralf Herrmann in English and German. Here he blogs about web fonts and web type matters. His Flickr stream. Ralf Herrmann studied visual communication at Weimar's Bauhaus University and works as a web, graphic, and type designer. He has made a name for himself in the typography community with his internet typography subcommunity typografie.info.

Currently Ralf Herrmann is doing his PhD at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In his dissertation he researches the implications of cognitive map research applied to the design of maps and wayfinding systems.

Speaker at ATypI 2011 in Reykjavik on the topic of the eszet letter.

Hooptie Script (2011) is a connected fifties script designed by Ralf after a trip to Motor City.

In 2012, Ralf Herrmann and Sebastian Nagel codesigned the Wayfinding Sans Pro family. This useful typeface was published at FDI. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Raoul & Compagnie

French designer of the grotesque faces Raoul Transport Britannique (2011) and Raoul AUTOROUTE Britannique (2011), which are modeled after the glyphs of British traffic signs. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Redruth's Basement Software
[Tom Redruth]

Tom Redruth is the American designer of Black Sam's Gold, based on handwritten characters from a map reprinted in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (vol. 195 no. 5; May 1999). Looks like treasure map writing. He designed Fountain Pen Frenzy in 2001 [compare with Treefrog]. This font was used on the cover of an album by Belle Monroe&her Brewglass Boys. Other faces include Bellamy's-Mapbats, Whydah-Heck-Poker, and the old typewriter face Carpal Tunnel (2003, based on a Remington typewriter). Finally, he made the Tolkien rune faces Tengwar-Teleri (2003) and Tengwar Marzabul (2002). Fontspace link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Ricardo Santos (was: VanArchiv Typography Design)
[Ricardo Rodrigues dos Santos]

Ricardo Rodrigues dos Santos (or briefly, Ricardo Santos, b. 1976 in Lisbon) is a Portuguese designer of type, who ran VanArchiv (est. 2000) from Loures, Portugal. He changed the name to Ricardo Santos and sells his work through MyFonts. Klingspor link. FontShop link.

His masterpiece is Atlantica (2005), a 28-weight transitional family. His faces Insectos Project (1997, geometric sans) Base Geometric Sans Serif (1998, geometric sans) Focus (1999, geometric sans) and Zeit Geist (2000, decorative) are discussed by a type forum. He made the sans families Boom (1997, decorative), Van (1998-2001, geometric sans) Urbis (2001, geometric sans) Baseniv (2001), geometric sans) RS1 (1998, decorative), Mitron (2001, decorative) Van Condensed (1998-2004, geometric sans) Van Dingbats (2004, travel dingbats), Focus and Focus Dingbats (2006, sans), and Lisboa (2000-2005, humanist sans, with dingbats based on the symbology of Lisbon city, published with Fountain). Lab Sans Pro (LuisAlonso+RicardoSantos--LabSlabPro-2011b.png">2011, by Luis Alonso and Ricardo Santos) is a geometric sans-serif typeface with a technological and minimalist look and is suitable for use in large sizes. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Richard Lucas

Codesigner with Andrew Leman of Penitentiary Gothic (2003): a commercial license plate font identical to that for California. It has five styles including three-dimensional embossing effects. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Roadgeek Fonts
[Michael D. Adams]

Memphis, TN-based Michael Adams (Roadgeek Fonts) developed a series of (free) heavy sans US highway sign fonts in 2002: Roadgeek2000SeriesB, Roadgeek2000SeriesC, Roadgeek2000SeriesD, Roadgeek2000SeriesE, Roadgeek2000SeriesEModified, Roadgeek2000SeriesF, RoadgeekTransportHeavy, RoadgeekTransportMedium. In 2005, he extended his font collection to include UK, German and US highway signs:

• Roadgeek 2005 Series B/C/D/E/E(M)/F fonts are intended to closely approximate Highway Gothic fonts
• Roadgeek 2005 Series 1B/2B/3B/4B/5B/6B are intended to closely approximate the new fonts, and are inteded for dark-on-light background signs.
• Roadgeek 2005 Series 1W/2W/3W/4W/5W/5WR/6W are close kin to the -B fonts, but are intended for light-on-dark background signs.
• Roadgeek 2005 Transport Heavy and Transport Medium should approximate the fonts used on British highway signs.
• Roadgeek 2005 Engschrift and Mittelschirft should approximate the fonts used on German highway signs.
• Roadgeek 2005 Arrows 1&2, Icons, and SignBacks are intended to help you in approximating U.S. highway signs, and are based on sign specifications from the Nebraska online MUTCD/SHS manuals.

RRCOGFONTS

RRCOGFONTS is a geometric dingbat font with symbols useful for certain geological maps. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Russian Topography Symbols

One free truetype symbol font, RussianTopographDemoSymbols, by Lena&Dmitri Bagh and Alexander Pompeev, 1996. Archived page. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Rustbelt Type
[Ken Gross]

Free truetype font MapBats by Ken Gross, 1998. Ken is a map designer and editor at Rustbelt Cartography in Cleveland, OH. The font is not on the web page. It used to be at Jami's site. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Satotyan

Designers of 3dfont, grofont (dripping blood font) and Jmap (outlines of the Japanese islands). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Scriptorium (Ragnarok Press, Fontcraft)
[David Fleming Nalle]

Dave Nalle was born in Beirut in 1959, but lives and works in Texas. He is currently in Manor, TX. From his wiki page: Dave Nalle is a political writer, game author and font designer who was active in the early history of the development of the internet. He is Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a group that promotes libertarianism within the Republican Party and is Senior Politics Editor at Blogcritics online magazine and is the CEO of Scriptorium Fonts. A creative and prolific designer, he has made hundreds of beautiful (often historic) fonts. His outfit, Scriptorium (based near Austin, TX, est. 1989), also does custom font and logo design. At some points, Scriptorium was also known as Ragnarok Press and Fontcraft. It specializes in artsy and ancient faces. Some subset of the fonts is made by Michael Scarpitti. Free font demos.

Images of his best selling fonts. Special subpages:

• Three free fonts: Onuava (a mini-serifed hybrid fixed-width font), Divona (sans), Sirona (based on Lombardic calligraphy).
• Decorative initials such as the 20th century sign lettering initials set Pencraft Initials (2009), Holly Initials (2010, based on Real PenWork (1880s, Knowles and Maxim), Vyones (2010), Vergennes (2001), Cascade (2009), Bergling (2010; based on initials by John M. Bergling).
• Wild West fonts: Academy, Atkinson Boomtown (2009, after the lettering of Frank Atkinson), Atkinson Eccentric (2009), BigIron, Cibola, Lachesis, Perdido, Plowright, Primer, Riudoso, Niederwald, San Lorenzo (2011, with a Mexican and Tuscan look), Stonehouse, Manquo, Rochambeau, Purcell, Vaquero.
• Arabic simulation fonts: Samaritan is based on the poster lettering of Alphons Mucha from his poster for the play La Samaritan. Serendib and Waziri are based on the hand lettering of René Bull from his edition of the Arabian Nights. Caliph is derived from Ernst Schneidler's classic Legende font, with variant characters based on his original lettering. And there is also Samarkand.
• Celtic fonts: the fonts include the Durrow font (1993, traditional rendering of Insular Minuscule calligraphy), Malvern, Glendower (based on the most common lettering in the Book of Kells), Knotwork (caps based on Celtic knots), Alba Text (modernized text font based on Celtic uncial lettering), Lindisfarne (based on a square uncial style), Stonecross (1997, derived from Celtic cross and gravestone inscriptions), Celtic Spirals (dingbats), Celtic Borders font (lets you combine key strokes to form decorative borders; many frames and borders are original Celtic designs by Arts&Crafts period artists like Evelyn Paul and Louis Rhead), Spiral Initials, Brigida (based on Rudolph Koch's interpretation of a squared uncial), Coverack (heavy non-traditional uncial), Dahaut (modernized uncial), Morgow (1999, spiral uncial), Teyrnon (elaborate spurred uncial), Padstow (heavy uncial), Vafthrudnir (2011, uncial), Sualtim and Columba (decorative initials based on characters found in the Book of Kells), Albemarle (2001).
• Oriental simulation fonts: Yoshitoshi (2003, based on the 1900-style writing by Yoshi Toshi.
• Gothic fonts, including Alt Gothic, Koch Gothic, Barnabas (2011), Montgisard (2010, roman capitals with blackletter lower case), Montressor (2010, ornamental blackletter capitals), T4C Beaulieux (1998, a free copy here), Bastarda (2011), Burgundian, Cadeaulx, Collins OE, Cortrai, Ereshkigal, Franconian, Froissart, Ghost Gothic, Magdeburg, Melusine, Monressor (2010, blackletter caps), Pyle Gothic, Rheingold, Sanctum, Stuttgart Gothic (2010), Textura, Theodoric, Yngling (2002).
• Renaissance fonts: Monumental Gothic, Caswallon, humanistic cursive (Palmieri, Castiglione and Hanes Italic), quirky Italian cursives (Fiorenza and Alleghieri), a Roman style hand-lettered font (Rudolfo and Rudolfo Swash), a Trajan-style Roman lettering (Hadrianus), a classic flourished cursive (Trinculo) and a set of floral intials from the Quattrocento (Fraticelli).
• Modern poster fonts: Ascelon, Bilitis, Cosmic Dude, Dromon, Ducatus Rough, Eglantine, Ekberg, Fortinbras, Hamilton, Jambon, Oblivion, Posada (2008, based on the poster lettering of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada), Squiffy, Suspicion, Magnin (2003).
• Mapmaker fonts: building elements are available in Basilica; Ortelius is a map dingbat font; Queensland (based on lettering by artist and calligrapher Eric Sloane), is bold, hand-drawn and reminiscent of medieval writing on maps. There are also Brandywine, Windlass (1996), and Cityscape. Orford (2008) is based on samples of hand lettering from a 1693 manuscript collected by Lewis Day in his classic book on historical paleography, Alphabets Old and New.
• Calligraphic fonts: Albemarle (2001), Azariel, Moncrief (2011, based on the calligraphy of J.M. Bergling), Pavane, Rasael (2009), Abdiel (2005), Roncesvalles, Gazardiel (2003, connected script), Spoonbill (2003, arts and crafts), Maacteris (Roman uncial font), Antioch Uncial (Roman uncial font), Burgundian (Classic black letter font), Franconian (Classic black letter font), Castiglione (Attractive Renaissance lettering), Cicero (Roman Rustica font), Formidable (1993, very bold late medieval / Lombardic style), Collins Old English (Classic Old English style gothic), Corbei Uncial (Roman uncial font), Cymbeline (late medieval lettering), Durrow (Standard insulur minuscule uncial font), Theodoric (Classic black letter font), Ghost Gothic (Unusual gothic font), Glendower (Uncial font based on Book of Kells), Gloriana (Interesting hand lettering style), Folkard (from the hand-lettering of Charles Folkard), Art deco faces: Borealis (2009), Criterion (2011), Illuminata, Madding (2009, a bold poster font that grew out of Aventine), Alexandrine (2009), art Deco Stencil (2009, based on samples of Art Deco stencil lettering by Pedro Lemos), Falmouth.
• Art nouveau faces: Acadian, Agravain (2009), Amphitryon (2009), Ariosto, Asphodel, Beaumains (2011, based on J.M. Bergling's lettering), Beauvoir, Belgravia (based on J.M. Bergling), Bernhardt (based upon the lettering of the Czech art-nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha), Bentham, Berenicia, Boetia (2003, based on J.M. Bergling's lettering), Bruges, Bucephalus (1993), Burd Ellen (2009), Butterfield, Curetana, Elsene (2011, based on lettering by early 20th century illustrator Clara Elsene Peck), Elysian, Flaubert, Gaheris, Ganelon, Goodfellow, Harbinger, Jugendstil Kunsthand (2003), Lysander, Maginot, Munich (after the Munchner Jugend magazine), Norumbega, Odeon, Ormandine (2010), Pantagruel, Phaeton, Reggio, Rochmbeau, Rockne (2009), Rudolfo, Setebos, Sprite, Summerisle, Sylphide (2005), Undine, Valentin (2008), Vambrace (2010), Walhal.
• Arabian-look fonts: Caliph, Satampra, Serendib, Jerash, Samaritan, Samarkand, Waziri.
• Interview and bio.
• Latest designs.
• Myfonts link.
• Mass download of most Scriptorium demo fonts at Fontflood.
• Modern poster fonts: Field Day (2003), Ascelon, Bilitis, Cosmic Dude, Dromon, Ducatus Rough, Eglantine, Ekberg, Fortinbras, Hamilton, Jambon, Oblivion, Squiffy.
• Constructivist fonts: Krasny Mir (2009), Vrubel, Structura (1997).
• Futuristic fonts: Alecto, Angelus, Circuit, Culdrose, Gearhead, Ironclaw, Parika, Sanhedrin, Semiramis (1997), Slither, Structuro, Yazata, Adastra (dings).
• Borders and ornaments. These include New Arets and Crafts Borders (20912, based on The Calendar of Golden Thoughts (Barse and Hopkins Publ, 1911).
• Boneyard fonts: Antrobus (2010), Sepultura (2002), Halloweenies, Dementia, Boneyard, Skull and Bones, Malagua, Paleos (2002, from titling of B movies in the cave girl genre), Carmilla, Abaddon, Black Cow (1998), Valdemar, Cuede, Ligeia, Mayhem, Mephisto, Golgotha, Sanguinary, Ironworks, Moravia, Gehenna, Nosegrind (2005, graffiti), Corpus, Ghostly.
• School fonts: Schoolhand (2010).
• Arts and Crafts movement (late Victorian period, 19th century), based on work and lettering by Walter Crane, William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Elbert Hubbard. The Arts&Crafts movement was enormously influential on the works of designers, artists and architects of the 20th century, and inspired the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. Fonts include William Morris' Kelmscott (based on Morris' Troy type), and True Golden, fonts from the Glasgow branch of the movement like Chelsea Studio (1997), which is based on Charles Rennie Mackintosh's lettering, fonts from the Roycrofters of New York like Semiramis and Ganelon, fonts based on Walter Crane's work such as Crane Gothic, Pencraft Initials (2009) and Walter Crane, and even fonts from the California Arts&Crafts period of the early 1900s like Coloma. Other typefaces: Aylward, Palmyra (based on work by the Roycrofters, a design community founded by Elbert Hubbard), Aylward (2010, Victorian), Hyacinth Initials, Spoonbill, Adresack (1996), Brandywine, Changeling (2009, based on lettering by fairy artist Fanny Railton), Ganelon, Goddard, and Advertising Gothic (2003), Valentin, Gaheris, Agravain (2009). Delaguerra (2001-2009) is based on a lettering style originating in the California Arts&Crafts period commonly associated with Mission Style. It is still in common usage in signage at historical sites in California.
• Medieval fonts of Scriptorium, critiqued by Marc Smith, page 65: Batwynge is based on lettre gffe by Geofroy Tory (1529), and not on an illuminated manuscript of the tenth century as claimed by Scriptorium.

Klingspor link. Dafont link.

View David Nalle's typefaces. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Selis Corp

Foundry, est. 2004, which sells its dingbat faces through Agfa. They include Emergency Workplace Signs, Hazard Symbols, Paint Industry Symbols, Risk Phrases, Transport Hazard Diamonds, Warning Signs. [Google] [More]  ⦿

SHOM - Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine

French government site with three free map fonts: DiTimes (2000, the diacritics for Times), Sy1Ca (1998), Sy2Ca (1998). The latter two have nice sets of marine map symbols. All three are copyright of EPSHOM. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Society of Cartographers
[Alun Rogers]

Free cartographic fonts by Alun Rogers (TrueType for PC) and Terry Bacon (Mac Type 1/TTF). [Google] [More]  ⦿

SPSS

Turkish archive of map symbol fonts: MapInfoShields, Map-Symbols, SPSSMarkerSet, MapInfoArrows, MapInfoMiscellaneous, MapInfoOil&Gas, MapInfoSymbols, MapInfoRealEstate, MapInfoTransportation, MapInfoWeather. Many of these fonts are from MapInfo Corporation. [Google] [More]  ⦿

St Mary's road symbol font
[Jeremy Gibbons]

Road symbols in metafont and type 1, by Alan Jeffrey and kiwi Jeremy Gibbons. [Google] [More]  ⦿

State of Minnesota

Two free truetype fonts, DNRRoadSymbols and DNRRecreationSymbols (1998), by Christopher Pouliot, DNR GIS Support Specialist, State of Minnesota. See also here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Stephan Mueller

Swiss graphic designer who works in Berlin. His fonts can be obtained at lineto and FontFont. These include: Aveugle (Braille font, 1995), Berlin-Schnefeld and Berlin-TegelSmallSizes (1995), Parking, FF Gateway (1997 a triangulated font family done with Cornel Windlin), and Grid (1996), FF Chernobyl (1998, from stenciled letters on the Chernobyl plant), Paragon, Batarde Coulee, Shuttle, FE Mittelschrift and FE Engschrift (1997, modeled after the impossible-to-counterfeit German license plate font), 104 (nice geometric font), FF Container, Bitmap-Condensed and Bitmap-Regular (1998), Office (Eurostile-like monospace, 1999), Regular (2004, Lineto, a typewriter family). FF Screen Matrix (1995) was done with Cornel Windlin. In 2003, he created the Numberplate series covering Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland.

View Stephan Mueller's typefaces. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Sulki and Min
[Sulki Choi]

This type team consists of Sulki Choi and Min Choi, graphic designers in Seoul, Korea, who first met in 2001 while studying for an MFA at Yale. Sulki is teaching at Kaywon School of Art&Design, and Min at the University of Seoul. Their typefaces include identities (Now Jump [for the exhibition at Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin, 2008], Arko Pix [dingbats for the Arko Art Center, 2008]), experimental faces (FF Tronic [2003: a grunge face done with Hyun Cho], Stealth [2002], Blitz [2001: grunge]), pixel faces (Bmap) and more or less standard faces (Zephyr (2001, a humanistic monospace family), Politie (2001), Transport Text [light-weight adaptation of the British road sign letterform, originally designed by Jock Kinneir and Magaret Calvert, 2003], Vitra Thin [2002: hairline sans], Bask Sans [2003]). Politie (2002) is a monospace adaptation of the typeface Wim Crouwel designed in the 1960s for the typewriter manufacturer Olivetti, which was released after decades as a digital font by the Foundry in London (Foundry Gridnik). Sulki and Min explain: Although neither the original nor the Foundry's interpretation were designed as fixed-width typefaces, its rigid, modular letterform seemed apt for a monospace adaptation. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Tania Alvarez Zaldivar

Talented Mexican graphic designer and digital artist based in Montreal, who is pushing the boundaries of experimental typography with creations like Fabric Type (2009), which was developed at Concordia University in Montreal. Examples: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Sukkhos (Mr. Softie) | Overseas Type (2010, done at Concordia University in Montreal) | Moda Barcelona (2011).

In 2010, she designed the map face Cartola, which grew out of a project at EINA in Barcelona and is based on Mrs Eaves. Mar 34 (2011) designed exclusively for the identity of Estruch, a restaurant located at the Plaza of the Cathedral in downtown Barcelona. The project was made in collaboration with Raquel Quevedo, who used the typeface for designing a graphic system for the identity. Both the face&the graphic design are based on postal service paraphernalia. Momo (2011) is a typeface that is developed based on the concepts of dada by El Lissitsky&Kurt Schwitters. Behance link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Ted Forbes

American traffic engineer who in 1945 proposed American Highway Gothic for the American highways. This typeface, and its derivatives emigrated to many countries, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Thailand and Malaysia. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Terminal Design
[James Montalbano]

Terminal Design is the company of James Montalbano in Brooklyn, New York, est. 1990. He was the President of the Type Directors Club, 2002-2003. He teaches type design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Feature on him by John Berry. James designed these fonts:

• Alfon (2003, serif). Montalbano calls it "muscular".
• The legible sans serif family ClearviewOne, designed for highway signs, and used for US highway signs starting in 2002. The highway sign font family is called ClearviewHwy), and is further explored here. ClearviewHwy is used for highways in the USA starting in 2004 (see the discussion here). The OpenType version of ClearviewOne is called ClearviewText (2007). ClearviewADA (2007) is a family of Clearview fonts that conform to the letterform specifications for signage outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act legislation. Free download.
• Corporate fonts for Condé Nast Publications, Warner Music, The American Medical Association, the U.S. National Park Service, Vanity Fair, Brides, Gourmet, Mademoiselle, Sassy, Details, Glamour, Jane, Self and Book.
• Consul (Text, Caption, Deck, Display): a text family. optically sized, it emerged from a Gustave Mayeur design done by Montalbano for Mens Vogue. it has a hint of didone.
• Enclave (2007): A sixteen font slab serif family.
• In an earlier life as part of Fonthaus, ca. 1994-1995, I believe that Montalbano designed fonts like DidotDisplayAntiqueTdi, DidotDisplayRegularTdi, ProgressivePsychoOneTdi (through Six) and SenzaTDI (many weights).
• The well-balanced and interesting sans-serif family Giacomo (2002). Includes Cyrillics.
• Insouciant (2011). An upright connected script family.
• At ITC: The strange experimental face ITC Orbon (1995-1996), ITC Freddo (1996), a thirties style sign font, and ITC Nora (1997).
• Kinney (2011). A type family for tables and information design.
• Moraine (2009): a serif family with a wide generous feel.
• Now Playing (2007): A digital revival of the naïve plastic lettering that was used on the marquee of the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
• Rawlinson (2003, a serif family, which includes a Condensed sub-family). NPS Rawlinson Roadway is an old style serif typeface currently used for the United States National Park Service's road signs. It was created to replace Clarendon and is named after James Montalbano's wife's last name.
• Shenandoah: display type based on the wood letters at Shenandoah National park.
• Social (2012). a rounded sans family for on-line use.
• Tangent (2007): A geometric sans in sixteen styles.
• Trilon (2009, +Condensed, Condensed, Expanded): sans face. Montalbano calls it a 21st century gothic.
• 718 (2010): a middle-of-the-road clean 24-style sans family.
• VF Sans and VF Sans Condensed (2011).
• The Yo series (2010): Yo Lucy, Yo Andy, Yo Frankie, Yo Sophie, Yo Zelda. This is a didone family on two axes (weight, extension) with 100 members (520 were originally planned). They reach in alphabetical order from condensed (Andy) to extended (Zelda).

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway
[Paul Shaw]

Article by Paul Shaw that starts out like this: There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system, a belief reinforced by Helvetica, Gary Hustwit's popular 2007 documentary about the typeface. But it is not true-or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? What was chosen in its place? Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur? To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica. These four strands are woven together, over nine pages, to tell a story that ultimately transcends the simple issue of Helvetica and the subway. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Thiago Camargo

Brazilian creator at Unique Types of the free faces Continue Caminhando (2011, sign language face), Mobilidade Social (2011), Nova Tipo (2011, experimental) and Escada X (2011, a caps face inspired by wayfinding signs). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Thomas E. Harvey

Thomas Harvey designed DingMaps (1974), Mirisch (informal slab), Nite Club (1992, stylish art deco caps face), Pisan (brush), Akenaten-Normal, Balloons-Normal, CairoFont, Calendar-Normal, Coliseum-Normal, DingMaps, FontSale, HolyMoly, EZBorder, Cindybob, Beeswax, Romanche, Tall Deco (1993), and NewForum. In all, he made 40 typefaces, some of which are free. Most can be licensed.

Fontsquirrel link. Abstract Fonts link. Dafont link. Fontspace link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Tim Fishlock

Tim Fishlock made an alphabet by using pieces of the London Underground Map. He also made an alphabet based on seats, and another one based on geometric shapes. Typetoken link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Tobias Frere-Jones

Celebrated type designer, born in 1970 in New York City. Until 1999, he worked mainly at Font Bureau:

• FB Agency.
• Armada.
• Asphalt.
• Benton Sans (1995-2003). Done with Cyrus Highsmith, it is a revival of Benton's 1903 family, News Gothic.
• BentonGothic (2000).
• Cafeteria.
• Citadel.
• CochinOldstyle (1992), CochinBlack (1991).
• Eldorado.
• Epitaph.
• Garage Gothic (1992). In three weights, it is based on parking garage ticket lettering but very reminiscent of license plate characters.
• Grand Central (1998).
• Griffith Gothic (1997-2000).
• Hightower (1996).
• Interstate (1993). Done for the United States Federal Highway Administration, but later released as a type family.
• Miller.
• Niagara (1995).
• Nobel (1993). An exquisite geometric sans family based on old ideas of De Roos. FB Nobel showcased.
• Pilsner.
• FB Reactor (which was first a FUSE7 font).
• Reiner Script (1993). Based on a 1951 brush script by Imre Reiner.
• Stereo.

At FontFont, he designed the children's handwriting fonts Dolores and Dolores Cyrillic.

At FUSE 15, he designed Microphone (1996). At FUSE 10, he published Fibonacci, a font consisting just of lines.

His custom work includes WorthGothic (1996), WorthLogo1996 (1995), WorthText (1995), GQGothic (1995), Halifax, Commonwealth (1995), Belizio-TwentySix (Font Bureau), HermanMillerLogo (1999, Font Bureau). Cassandra, Vitriol (1993), Quandry (1992-1994) and Chainletter (1993).

Retina Agate (2001, specially made for small-print stock listings at the Wall Street Journal) netted him a Bukvaraz 2001 award and an AIGA 2003 Design Award.

Since 1999, he designs for the Hoefler Type Foundry:

• HTF Retina (2002). For use in the Wall Street Journal.
• Gotham (2002). A sans serif done with the help of Jesse M. Ragan. Read about it here. In 2007, he published a rounded version of it, called Gotham Round. Gotham was used in 2008 by Obama in his presidential campaign.
• Cyclone (2003).
• In 2010, he and Jonathan Hoefler designed the sans family Forza.
• Giant (2003).
• Knoz (2003).
• Topaz (2003).
• Whitney (2004). This is an amazing 58-style sans family designed for the Whitney Museum, but now generally avalaible from Hoefler, and touted as a great family for infographics. A derivative, Whitney-K, is the house font of Kodak.

In 2004, The Hoefler Type Foundry became Hoefler&Frere-Jones, New York's main contempiorary foundry. With Hoefler, he collaborated on projects for The Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Nike, Pentagram, GQ, Esquire, The New Times, Business 2.0, and The New York Times Magazine.

In all, he has designed over five hundred typefaces for retail publication, custom clients, and experimental purposes. His clients have included The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Cooper-Hewitt Museum, The Whitney Museum, The American Institute of Graphic Arts Journal, and Neville Brody. He has lectured at Rhode Island School of Design (from which he graduated with a BFA in 1992), Yale School of Art, Pratt Institute, Royal College of Art, and Universidad de las Americas. His work has been featured in How, ID, Page, and Print, and is included in the permanent collection of the Victoria&Albert Museum, London.

Interview. Interviewed by Dmitri Siegel. In 2006, Frere-Jones received the prestigious Gerrit Noordzij Prize. He created Estupido Espezial for fun, but it actually made it into an issue of Rollingstone. Catalog of his faces at Font Bureau.

View typefaces designed by Tobias frere-Jones. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Tom Barden

Tom Barden created the geometric but also playful typeface Evolution (2009). He also made Africa Type (2010) and the octagonal athletic lettering face There It Is (2009). Visually Interesting (2009) is a type experiment. Unity (2011) is a heavy octagonal poster face. He is also working on Airport Icons (2011). He is based in London and is a graphic designer and photographer. Home page. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Tom Oetken

American designer, b. 1963. His designs include Seattle Sans and the highway signage faces Electronic Highway Sign, Highway Gothic, zzyzx and Freeway Gothic, all made in 2009. In 2010, he made 7SEGMENTALDIGITALDISPLAY, EuroCaps, GliscorGothic, and U.S.101. The Traffic family (2011) is free. Aka Ash Pikachu. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Traffic fonts

Japanese blog that discusses highway signage fonts. In Japanese. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Traffic Sign Typefaces: France
[Ralf Herrmann]

Ralf Herrmann discusses L1, L2, L4 and L5, the French traffic typefaces. Frank Rausch made a free font for these, called Caracteres. Signal (1995, URW++) is a 4-style commercial type family for these alphabets. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Traffic Sign Typefaces: Netherlands
[Ralf Herrmann]

Ralf Herrmann discusses Dutch traffic typefaces. Quoting some passages: Until recently the organization being in charge of the traffic signs was the ANWB. It was founded as a Dutch bikers(!) society ("Algemeene Nederlandsche Wielrijders Bond") in 1883 and later became the royal tourist society. [...] The typeface used since the 1960s is called ANWB-Ee (also RWS-Ee) and it is based on FHWA series E (Modified) from the United States. A condensed version (ANWB-Cc) is also available and it is based on the FHWA series C design. In the late 1990s Gerard Unger was commissioned to design a new typeface called ANWB-Uu. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Traffic Sign Typefaces: Poland
[Ralf Herrmann]

Ralf Herrmann discusses Polish traffic typefaces. Quoting some passages: The typeface has a very simple geometric design almost without any typographic corrections. Only one style is in use. There is no condensed style available and no variations for positive/negative contrasts. There are two digital versions: Tablica drogowa (commercial) by Grzegorz Klimczewski and Drogowskaz (free) by Emil Wojtacki. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Traffic System Typefaces

The typophiles are listing traffic system typefaces used in various countries. Here is a partial list extracted from that thread. Images collected by Ralf Herrmann.

• USA and Canada: FHWA Series Fonts/Clearview
• Australia: FHWA Series Fonts (modified)
• Malaysia: FHWA Series
• Germany: DIN Mittelschrift/Engschrift
• Great Britain: Transport/Motorway
• The Netherlands: ANWB-Ee/ANWB-Uu
• Austria: Mittelschrift/Engschrift Austria
• Switzerland: ASTRA Frutiger
• Sweden: Tratex
• Norway: Trafikkalfabetet
• Italy: Traffic Type Spain, aka Carretera Convencional
• Spain: For signage on highways, freeways and normal car-roads, the Autopista font (Highway Gothic). For normal streets, urban sorroundings, the Carretera Convencional font (aka Traffic Type Spain 1, and as CCRIGE).
• Portugal: JAE.
• Denmark: Dansk Vejtavleskrift.
• France: L1/L2, L3/L4
• Greece, Czech Republik, Latvia: DIN
• Estonia: Arial
• Hong Kong: transport
• Belgium: SNV-regular or SNV-condensed (SNV: Association Suisse de Normalisation). SNV Extra Condensed is designed by Verein Schweizer in 1972.
• Poland: See here

Traffic Type

URW font families called Traffic Type Luxembourg, Traffic Type Sweden and Traffic Type Spain, consisting of sans and slab serif forms. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Traffic Typefaces: Ralf Herrmann
[Ralf Herrmann]

A study and discussion of traffic typefaces from many countries by Ralf Herrmann. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Trigon Dragon's Ultima Mapping Fonts

Free dingbats and runes "for mapping the continents, towns, castles, and dungeons of the Ultima series of roleplaying games made by Origin Systems": UltimapDungeon (1999), UltimapEntities (1999), UltimapIntown (1999), UltimapLetters (1999), UltimapOutdoors (1999). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Truetype Mapping Fonts

A 20-font archive with transportation and map symbol fonts. It contains the ESRI fonts, MARLOTP, Map-Symbols (by MapInfo Corporation, Troy, New York, 1995), and MapInfoArrows, MapInfoCartographic, MapInfoMiscellaneous, MapInfoOil&Gas, MapInfoSymbols, MapInfoRealEstate, MapInfoTransportation, and MapInfoWeather. [Google] [More]  ⦿

TTF MAPPING SYMBOLS

Links to truetype fonts that are useful for map making. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Type on Traffic Signs

A Flickr group for traffic sign typefaces. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Typebox
[Mike Kohnke]

With Joachim Müller-Lancé, Mike Kohnke (Oakland, CA) is the American cofounder (b. 1967) of the Typebox foundry in San Francisco in 2001. The typefaces: 9volt, Belt 9 (2003), Infolinga (2003, communication dingbats), Reflux, Sylmar, Svolt, TX Blotch (inky), TX Manifesto (includes a stencil font), TxSwitch (2002), TX Map Bits (2003, pixel map icons), TX Hex, TX Signifier, TX Tiny Tim, TX Toolshop (ornaments), TX Wirish, TX Monodular, TX Lithium, TX Gitter, TX Elf (pixel family) and TX Cortina (1997, an LED style face by Joachin Müller-Lancé). At AND in 2006, he created the hand signal dingbat font H-AND-S together with Jean-Benoît Lévy, Diana Alisandra Stoen, Sylvestre Lucia and Joachim Müller-Lancé. Free fonts: Free Farm (pixel font), Free Fix, Free Lithium Katakoto (by Akira Kobayashi), Free Signal Signifier (2002), Free Tinka, Free Toolshop (dingbats). TX Signal Signifier was made jointly by Mike Kohnke, Akira Kobayashi, Jean Benoit-Levy, Joachin Müller-Lancé, Kevin Roberson, McShane Adigard Design, Diana Stoen, and Cynthia Jaquette in 2003. FontShop link. Klingspor link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Typeimage
[Jochen Hasinger]

Jochen Hasinger (b. 1964, München) lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. From 1992-1994, he studied typography with Wolfgang Weingart and André Guertler at the Schule für Gestaltung in Basel, and studied in Stuttgart before that, rom 1985-1988. He became art director at various ad agencies in Frankfurt and Hamburg. He founded Typeimage in 2003. Klingspor link.

Typefaces designed by Jochen Hasinger:

• Covent BT (2003, a display sans family, Bitstream). Covent Nano (2006, a narrow version of Covent).
• TIPS (2004, Linotype). This family consists of six logo and image fonts: BComTIPS, ThisWayTIPS, TravelTIPS, ActiveTIPS, AstroTIPS, CountTIPS. Linotype page where TIPS is discussed: Tips (which stands for Type-Image-Piktogramm-Schrift in German, or type-image-pictogram-font in English) contains six different fonts of pictograms and stylized icons. Tips Active is a font filled with characters reminiscent of Otl Aicher's sports pictograms from the 1972 Olympic Games. Tips Astro contains astrological signs. Tips Bcom depicts icons for use in business communication or web page design. Tips Count is a font featuring numbers inside of various circles. Tips This Way and Tips Travel are both collections of pictograms for use in navigation and other signage systems.
• Sabin (2006).
• Architextura (2001).
• Botta (1989, modern).
• DryGin (1979, headline face).

Typodermic
[Ray Larabie]

Ray Larabie (b. 1970) ran Typodermic in Mississauga, ON, which opened in the Fall of 2001. In 2006, it moved to Vancouver, BC, and in 2009 it moved on to Nagoya, Japan. Dafont page. Of course, Ray Larabie has been making fonts since 1996, but those early fonts were freeware. His pre 2001 fonts are grouped under the label Larabie Fonts. In 2001, he set up Typodermic. Latest additions.

The Typodermic fonts:

• 2012: Permanence (a retro=futuristic font based on Alvin Toffler's cover of Future Shok, 1970), Clockpunk (octagonal and quaint), Battlemaze (trekkie face), Mixolydian (industrial sans).
• 2011: Ugocranis (a brutalist typeface), Clipwave, Wheaton (MICR-inspired), Mango Scribble, TRS Million (dot matrix face), Ugogranis (constructivist), Gomoku (paper cut face), From The Internet.
• 2010: Cranberry Gin (2010, octagonal), Restore (all caps, geometric sans), From The Stars (an elliptical techno family done with Chikako Larabie), Thrusters (space age face), Dream Orphanage, Kengwin (rounded slab serif), Gleaming The Cube (Greek simulation face), Vectipede (a slab serif family), Great Escape (an elliptical sans family), Subrocs (connected script), Hackensack (with Chikako Larabie), Polarband (bilined headline face), Naked Power, Special Forces (a great macho slab serif headline face---watch for awards to roll in), Warugaki (handpainted), Warmer, Honfleur (art deco; with Chikako Larabi), Voivode (a headline face done with Chikako Larabie), Hachimitsu (Asian look face, done with Chikako Larabie), Kadeworth (rounded retro look sans, done with Chikako Larabie), Gnuolane Jump (2010, with Chikako Larabie), Markerfield (brush), Board of Directors (Bank Gothic style family, done with Chikako Larabie), GGX88 (a Swiss sans family), Body Goat, Reversal, Gord (techno), Computechnodigitronic (LED, LCD geek-look font), Bench Grinder, Inklea (a bubbly face), Skygirls (retro brush script), Gloss (a paint brush face based on Champion, 1957, G.G. Lange).
• 2010: Galderglynn Esquire.
• 2009: Maqui (an industrial headline sans family), Zingende (art deco family: caps only), Misadventures, Gaz (large retro sans family), Meloriac (heavy display sans), Acrylic Brush, Enamel Brush (a digitization of Catalina, 1955, Emil J. Klumpp), DDT (neutral sans), Thump (fat, casual), Desperate Glamour, Pricedown (an update of his free 1990s font, patterned after the lettering on The Price Is Right show), Mitigate (monoline and slabbed; has some typewriter styles), Catwing, Walken (slab serif stencil), Silicone (soft rounded sans family), Movatif (sans), Gunplay (a stencil family inspired by the poster for the 1972 Steve McQueen/Ali MacGraw film The Getaway), Fragile Bombers (octagonal), Forgotten Futurist (techno sans, 19 styles), Bullpen (slab serif), Coolvetica, Duality, Good Times, Strenuous, Shlop (paint-drip style), Dirty Baker's Dozen (stencil), Junequil (VAG Rounded style), Owned (graffiti), Domyouji, Threefourtysixbvarrel (stencil), Enacti, Uniwars (futuristic, 16 styles).
• 2008: Madawaska (a rugged slab serif), Ebenezer (grunge), Gnuolane Stencil, Raincoat, Report School (avant garde sans), Jesaya, Carouselambra (art nouveau), Debusen (rounded), Barge (military font), Renju (grunge), Otoboke (handlettered), Hit (informal hand), R6 D8 (futuristic sans family), Rexlia (an octagonal machinistic family), Hybrea (a display sans with TV screen rounding), Sweater School, Tussilago (2008, a neutral sans family), Presicav (extended sans), Hover Unit, Addlethorpe (grunge), Scheme (rounded sans), Usurp (bouncy poster lettering), Negotiate (technical sans family), Divulge, Sewn, Gnoulane (condensed sans), Moja, Teeshirt (old typewriter face), Pound (art deco marries grunge), Graveblade (heavy metal font), Synthemesc (psychedelic anti-Starbucks font), Chysotile (white on black grunge), Cardigan (sans), Gurkner (balloon style), Reagan (grunge).
• 2007: Tight (a copy of Dean Morris's 1976 Letraset font Quicksilver), Headlight, Meloche (a 3-style grotesk), Octin Spraypaint (grunge stencil), Octin Vintage (grunge), Bouffant (script), Octin Prison (stencil), Octin Sports (octagonal), Octin College (octagonal, for sports jerseys), Octin Stencil (free octagonal font family), Burnaby Stencil (stencil), Superclarendon, Conceal, Ohitashi, Stud (grunge), Bristles (grunge), Skirt, Cotton (grunge), Kelvingrove (a bit of copperplate gothic, rounded and shaved), Augustine, Containment, Snowa, Veriox, Scrubby, Transmute, Sheaff, Injekuta (techno), Rinse (grunge), Polyflec, Domyouji (square sans), Winthorpe (old style), Cutiful (script), Flyswim (grunge), Dirtstorm (spray-painted stencil), Shnixgun (grunge), Neuzon (grunge), Oxeran (old typewriter), PRINTF (grunge all caps monospaced), Akazan (sans), Nyxali (a metal tag face), Meloriac (an extra bold Futura inspired face), Nesobrite (25 styles of Bank Gothic lookalikes), Meloriac (headline sans), Walnut (graffiti face), Gnuolane (a narrow sans), Edifact (a damaged computer font), Darkheart, Stampoo (squarish), Raymond (rough script), Hayate (oriental look), Telephoto. The entire Octin series is free at DaFont.
• 2006: Octynaz (grunge), Paltime (ornamented), Jolie Ecriture Desard (children's hand), Mango (comic book face), Desard (child's hand), Bulltoad, Lerku (eroded serif), Charbroiled (also eroded), Ceroxa (eroded stencil), Nagomi (a chiseled-look Asian font based on calligraphy of Chikako Suzuki from Nagoya), Whiterock, Yellande, Chilopod (a futuristic face inspired by the logo from the 1980s videogame, Atari Centipede), Order, Goldburg (based on a typeface by George Bowditch, 1957), Laserjerks, Milibus (futuristic), Bonobo (serifed), Ohitashi, Sarasori (TV-tube shaped face in the style of Oban), Structia (an octagonal family), Betaphid (octagonal), Gendouki (futuristic stencil), Slugger (athletic lettering), Marianas (a gorgeous art deco face), Lineavec (octagonal), Corzinair (serif family), Buxotic (a great caps face), Cinecav X (for closed caption TV and DVD), Salsbury (comic book face), Lonsdale (loosely based on a font called Parkway Script, which was designed by Emil Hirt in 1964), Alepholon (futuristic), Kwokwi, Mikadan (a tribute to Stephenson Blake's Verona from 1948, which was in turn based on William Dana Orcutt's Humanistic from 1904), Marion (a beautiful transitional family), Quasix (hookish), Skraype (grunge stencil), Bleeker (casual lettering), Linefeed (monospaced line printer font), Draculon (a casual face inspired by the letterforms of William Orcutt's humanistic font from 1904 which was in turn based on an Italian manuscript from 1485), Mahavishnu (a mix between 1970s psychedelics and art nouveau), Doradani (a corporate identity sans family), Korotaki (futuristic).
• 2005: Kadonk (a Halloween face), Report (a VAG-Rounded style face), Croteau (a poster face), Heroid (ook face), Barrista (informal script), Wyvern (sans serif), Wubble (like puddles of water), Caryn (casual script), Folder (a rigid sans family), Venacti (a futuristic family), Xenara (a keyboard lettering family), Emory (a destructionist sans family), Ligurino (neat sans&serif family), Biondi (update of Copperplate Gothic; followed in 2010 by Biondi Sans; these copperplate style faces are in the style of AT Sackers), Byington (Trajan column lettering), Sayso Chic, Expressway (28 weights, a highway signage family), Algol (pixel type), Meposa (fat display face), Tandelle (condensed), Vigo, Maychurch, Mecheria, Vactic (dot matrix), Zosma, Topstitch, Windpower, Llandru, Soap (a creative extension of Cooper Black, with dingbats), Kleptocracy (1999-2005), Owned, Rimouski (sans), Sinzano (sans with opentype ligatures galore; compare, e.g., House Ed Interlock), Zamora.
• 2004: Affluent, Threefortysixbarrel (stencil face), Tank, Telidon (dot matrix face), Funboy, Neuropol X, Neuropol Nova, Mufferaw (comic book face), Larabiefont, Zekton (techno), Strenuous 3D, Silentina (advertised as "a silent movie font"), Amienne (brush script), Fenwick Outline (free), Betsy Flanagan (1998, a keyboard face), Boopee (children's handwriting), Pirulen (in the general Bank Gothic style), Zalderdash.
• 2003: Zupiter, Blue Highway.
• Before 2002: the dot matrix family Telidon, Telidon Ink, the architectural font Jillican (octagonal), Snowgoose, Bomr, Pakenham, Neuropol, Nasalization, Fenwick, Kleptocracy DLX, Sui Generis, Dirty Bakers Dozen (faded stencil), Minya Nouvelle, Asterisp, Chinese Rocks, Jillsville (great artsy Courier), Ulian, Wevli (including Wevli Dingbats), Sappy Mugs (funny mugshots), Sofachrome (1999, inspired by Pontiac car emblems), Eden Mills (1999).

Catalog of the Typodermic library in decreasing order of popularity. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Ultimate Symbol Fonts

Dingbat font foundry. All fonts 40USD. Type 1 and truetype, Mac and PC. The fonts: USF Arrows-One, USF Arrows-Two, USF Arrows-Three, USF Arrows-Four, USF Auto National ID Plates, USF Arrows Pointers, USF Astronomy, USF Banners, USF Bells Bows, USF Birds-One, USF Birds-Two, USF Banners Bells Bows, USF Birds, USF Circular Designs, USF Circular, USF Dingbats-One, USF Dingbats-Two, USF Dingbats-Three, USF Dingbats-Four, USF Dingbats-Five, USF Dingbats-Six, USF Dingbats, USF Fish, USF Flourishes Accents-One, USF Flourishes Accents-Two, USF Flourishes Accents-Three, USF Flourishes Accents, USF Highway International-One, USF Highway International-Two, USF Highway USA-One, USF Highway USA-Two, USF Highway USA-Three, USF Highway USA-Four, USF Highway International, USF Highway USA, USF Insects, USF Leaves, USF Moons, USF Nature, USF Pointers-One, USF Plantlife, USF Pinwheels, USF Plantlife, USF Radials, USF Recreational SEGD-One, USF Recreational SEGD-Two, USF Recreational SEGD, USF Sealife, USF Spiral Rotors, USF Shapes-One, USF Shapes-Two, USF Shapes-Three, USF Shapes-Four, USF Shapes-Five, USF Snowflakes, USF Stars-One, USF Stars-Two, USF Suns-One, USF Suns-Two, USF Symbol Signs DOT-One, USF Symbol Signs DOT-Two, USF Symbol Signs DOT-Three, USF Sealife, USF Shapes, USF Stars, USF Suns, USF Suns Moons, USF Symbol Signs DOT, USF Typographic Devices-One, USF Typographic Devices-Two, USF Typographic Devices-Three, USF Typographic Devices, USF Zodiac. Sold at Agfa. [Google] [More]  ⦿

USA traffic font norms

PDF about the "Standard Alphabets for Traffic Control Devices", explaining about spacings, metrics, specs, and the 1966 and 1977 norms in the USA. There is a book, the Standard Highway Signs 2002 Edition, Metric Version, also known as the "Masnual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices" or MUTCD. [Google] [More]  ⦿

USGS

Here we find the map dingbat font USGS hy (1994). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Vägverket
[Karl Wångstedt]

Swedish traffic site, where once can download a sans traffic font family called Tratex, consisting of TratexSvart (2001), TratexVit (2001), TRATEXNEGVERSAL-NEGVERSAL, TRATEXPOSVERSAL-POSVERSAL, TRATEXSVARTSAMISK-SVARTSAMISK, TRATEXVITSAMISK-VITSAMISK. About the production of this family: created by Karl-Gustaf Gustafson and Chester Bernsten and digitized by Karl Wångstedt. Dafont link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Verein Schweizer Straßenfachmänner Foundry

Swiss foundry which made SNV Extra Condensed (1972), a font later distributed commercially by URW. This is a license plate font used by various U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Not only is this font family quite ugly, it is also quite unreadable. A Ralf Herrmann explains that i can still be found on older Swiss traffic signs and also in Belgium where it is still the main font on road signs. Since 2003, the swiss use a new font called ASTRA Frutiger, which is based on Frutiger 57 Condensed with slight changes. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Vermont

The Government of Vermont shows some map symbol fonts: Warning Signs, Regulatory Signs, Guide Signs #90, and Guide Signs #91. No downloads. [Google] [More]  ⦿

WaterGisWeb AG

Free geographical symbol fonts by WaterGisWeb AG in Bern, Switzerland: WEA_GSK, WEA_Geologie, WEA_Wasserkraft. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Whiteshell.com
[T. Harvey]

T. Harvey and J. Rose at Whiteshell.com are the designers of the handprinted font Beltway Prophecy (2001), based on signage seen on I-95. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Wolfgang Homola

Type design graduate from Reading who created Pulse (2004), a family consisting of a sans and an adapted serif for corporate identity design. Today, Wolfgang Homola is an independent type designer and graphic designer in Vienna. At ATypI 2009 in Mexico City, he introduces a new typeface for a new signage system for the AK building in Vienna.

In 2011, he published the sans family Soleil at TypeTogether. This family is geometric with a twist---small asymmetries and optical corrections.

His dissertation in 2004 is entitled Type Design in the Age of the Machine. The Breite Grotesk by J.G. Schelter & Giesecke.

Klingspor link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Y&Y

Foundry of Charles Bigelow, Kris Holmes, and Berthold Horn, which ceased operations near the start of the 21st century. They have the following font sets: Galilei, XY_Pic fonts (Nine ATM compatible fonts in Adobe Type 1 format for use with Ross Moore and Kristoffer Rose's XY Pic drawing package for TeX), Y&Y American Mathematical Society (AMS) fonts (Computer Modern, Euler), Y&Y European Modern (EM) fonts, Y&Y Lucida fonts (1996), LucidaBrightAstro, Lucida Bright Expert, LucidaConsole, Lucida Fixed Narrow, Lucida Greek, Lucida Latin, Lucida Sans Cyrillic and Latin 2, Lucida Sans Hebrew, Lucida Sans Linedraw, Lucida Sans School, Lucida Sans Unicode, Y&Y MathTime 1.1 fonts, Y&Y MathTime Plus fonts, Y&Y TeX Pi fonts, Alan Jeffrey Geometric Sans Serif Blackboard Bold, Ralph A. Smith Formal Script face (based on R. Hunter Middeleton), Jeremy Gibbons and Alan Jeffrey St. Mary's Road Symbolic Logic, Roland Waldi extension of LASY symbol --- version 2.0, APL (free), Crufty (free old typewriter font), Finger (free finger dingbats), MarVoSym (free). The Lucida collection (Lucida Blackletter, Lucida Bright, Lucida Bright Math, Lucida Calligraphy, Lucida Casual, Lucida Console, Lucida Fax, Lucida Handwriting, Lucida Sans, Lucida Sans Typewriter, Lucida Typewriter, and Lucida Unicode) is distributed by Ascender Corporation from 2005 onwards. [Google] [More]  ⦿