TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Wed Dec 17 04:31:50 EST 2025

FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE

LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

Barry Stock Fonts [Barry Stock]

American designer Barry stock ss a subcontractor for the US FHWA, on the The Manual on Uniform Control Devices (MUTCD) and Standard Highway Signs manual. There was a significant update to all of the Highway Gothic types in use by FHWA in 2025. FHWA does not issue fonts, but to facilitate his work for them, he created free, public domain, Opentype fonts with the updated letter forms and spacing. These contain the outlines and widths used in all of the current (2025) signage issued by the FHWA. FHWA specs signage to 1/1000th of an inch, and the fonts are built on a 5,000 em square to insure their accuracy when building signage for the public. The update's most significant change is to the x-height, ascenders, and descenders of all of the fonts, standardizing them throughout the range. Other changes include a revised lower case s in C and D, built fractions, and a narrower w in D. There are two different modes of using the fonts. One set is family-built with B, C, D, E, Emod, and F in one menu, and meant for the casual user. The other mode provides a family for each weight with positive and negative spacing based on FHWA's percentage system for letterspacing, which differs from Adobe's method of tracking, and are meant to be used for official signage. The fonts contain only the characters used in the official releases, without kerning (which is standard for Highway Gothic), and are taken directly from DXF files provided by FHWA.

Designer of Byway (2018), which is a free family of sans typefaces. He explains the design: Byway is a series of four typefaces that resolve the narrowest width and widest width of the existing FHWA Highway Gothic types. Those existing designs (Highway Gothic Series C, Series D, Series E, Series E Mod) are each standalone designs that are related, but not truly harmonized. Byway Series C, D and E are smooth steps between the FHWA Series B and Series F, and the Series E Mod is accomplished in the same manner as FHWA Series E Mod, with additional weight and following the same horizontal and vertical proportions. The fonts only contain the characters present in the original FHWA types.

Other fonts by Barry Stock include Porcini (2024: a death metal font), Tarpon Motel (2018; a constructivist font that updates an earlier design by him from 1991 Opticon, which enjoyed a great deal of popularity as a shareware font, even appearing as the logo and credit type for the 1997 Golden Globe Awards), Ludlow Tempo (2015; digitized from Ludlow specimen books and based on Futura), and FHWA Series BC, CD, DE and EF.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Barry Stock Fonts
Fontspace page
Behance page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Sites with only a few free fonts ⦿ Map/Travel dingbats ⦿ Fontspace ⦿ Type design and constructivism ⦿