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Category | Sans-serif |
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Designer(s) | Theodore W. Forbes |
Foundry | N/A |
Date released | 1948 |
The Standard Alphabets For Traffic Control Devices, (also known as the FHWA Series fonts and unofficially as Highway Gothic), is a sans-serif typeface developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The font is used for road signage in the United States and many other countries around the world. The typefaces were developed to maximize legibility at a distance and at high speed. The typeface has 6 fonts, from narrow to wider strokes:
An official digital font file of the typeface has never been released. Instead, individuals or companies have developed digital fonts based off the shapes and specifications provided in the standard.
The Roadgeek 2014 font set is an open source and digital reproduction of the FHWA fonts. [1]
The typefaces are defined by the FHWA's Standard Alphabets for Traffic Control Devices, originally published in 1948, and reprinted in 1952. 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 and in the inclusion of lowercase letters for all alphabet series.
FHWA Series A through F were developed by the Public Roads Administration (which later became FHWA) during World War II. Draft versions of these typefaces were used in 1942 for signs on the Pentagon road network. [2] Between 1949 and 1950, as part of a research program into freeway signing carried out by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Series E Modified was developed from Series E by thickening the stroke width to accommodate button reflectors for ground-mounted signs, while a lowercase alphabet was developed to allow mixed-case legend (consisting initially of Series D and lowercase letters) to be used on externally illuminated overhead signs. [3]
The lowercase letters, paired with Series E Modified, later became the basis of a national standard for mixed-case legend on freeway guide signs with the 1958 publication of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) signing and marking manual for Interstate Highways.
Series A has been officially discontinued in the United States due to poor legibility at high speeds, though it continues to be specified for certain signs in New Zealand. In 2004, the FHWA published lowercase letters for all of the typefaces and made changes to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices , which allows their use. [4] The first font only included uppercase letters, with the exception of Series E(M), which was used on large expressway and freeway guide signs.
There was an expectation that over the next few decades, the new Clearview typeface, also specifically developed for use on traffic signs, would replace the FHWA series on some new signage. [5] In 2016, the FHWA announced that it was rescinding its 2004 interim approval of Clearview in the United States. While existing Clearview signs could stay up, new signs would have to go back to using Highway Gothic. [6] In June 2016, a bill challenging this decision was introduced in the United States House of Representatives, which would have ordered the FHWA to reinstate the interim approval for Clearview. [7] This bill passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018. [8] The Federal Highway Administration states "[Clearview] is completely optional and is neither required nor recommended". [9]
Typically, one- or two-digit Interstate, U.S. Highway, and U.S. state route signs use the Series D font for the numbers, while signs with three or more digits use either a narrower font (Series B or C) or have smaller numbers in the Series D font. Series E and F is most commonly used on U.S. speed limit signs, although older signs often use narrower fonts. Street name signs usually feature white Series B, C or D letters on a green background, which can be substituted for other colors, such as blue or brown. They may have all capital letters or a combination of capital and lowercase letters. Freeway guide signs use Series E(M) on said backgrounds.
On white (regulatory), orange (construction) and yellow (warning) signs, black letters and numbers are used instead. Georgia uses both Series C and D fonts for the Interstate Highway signs until 2012. Beginning in 2016 when the interim approval for Clearview was rescinded, the Arizona Department of Transportation is now using mixed case (non-Modified) Series E for freeway guide signage, mixed case Series D for guide signage on non-freeway roads, and mixed case Series C for street name signs. [10]
By the mid-1990s the FHWA series of typefaces was used as a source of inspiration for a multi-weight print typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones of Font Bureau. Frere-Jones made accommodations for smaller print reproduction and Font Bureau released the face under the name Interstate. It has been adopted by many companies for branding; for example, NBC used it for NBC Sports graphics packages from 1997 to 2006, and TV Guide uses the typeface on its cover. The Weather Channel utilized this typeface extensively, both on its weather maps and for its local forecasts.
The logo of the premium cable channel Epix also uses a lowercase version of this typeface. NESN uses this typeface for on-screen graphics. The New York Mets use this typeface at Citi Field. The gossip magazine InTouch has been using this typeface since 2012. Films such as 8 Mile also use this font. Entertainment Tonight has been using this typeface since its 34th season. The soft drink Sierra Mist used this font on its logo from 2010 to 2014. It was also used in most Hannaford stores. Gridlock!, a pricing game on the American game show The Price Is Right in which the contestant can win a car, also uses the font in its logo and price displays.
Australia uses the same font as the United States for their road signs. This is specified in Australian Standard AS 1744:2015 Standard alphabets for road signs. AS1744 directly acknowledges the FHWA for assisting with development of AS1744, and states that AS1744 reproduces the metric version of the FHWA Series 2000 fonts.
The FHWA typefaces are also used predominantly on road signs in Canada. The province of Ontario used an in-house modified version until the late 1980s that featured slightly different characteristics, such as flat-top numeral 3's and numeral 1's without a serif. The city of Windsor began replacing its Helvetica signs with Highway Gothic in 2018. [11]
Use of the font is seen in Peru (under different series labels), New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico. [12] Other countries may use typefaces that are either derived directly from the FHWA series or very similar in appearance such as South Africa, Lesotho, Colombia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
In Portugal, a variant of Highway Gothic—the Rodoviária typeface—was used on road signs since the 1970s until the introduction of a new signage model in 1994–1998. It is still used in the road signs of Macau (written in Portuguese).
In Argentina, new road signs based on the Manual de Señalamiento Vertical—Edición 2017 recently used the FHWA typeface.
In India, the FHWA typeface used for highway shields only while Transport used for road signs.
In mainland China, newer road signs use the FHWA typeface alongside Helvetica Bold for alphanumeric text.
In Taiwan, Arial Bold is used alongside FHWA Series E for English text. [13]
Indonesia formerly used the typeface from 1993 until 2014, regulated by Ministry of Transportation's law No. 62 year 1993. [14] However, in 2014, Ministry of Transportation passed a regulation to introduce new road signs, being replaced with the new Clearview typeface. [15]
In Spain, Series E is the base for Autopista typeface, used on Spanish motorways and freeways (Autopistas/ Autovias).
The Netherlands uses a derivative of the FHWA Alphabet Series typeface designed by the ANWB and the Dutch highways and waterways authority. The original set included two of the six series in the original typeface—RWS-Ee (wide, based on Series E (M)) and RWS-Cc (narrow, based on Series C) or ANWB-Ee (regular) and ANWB-Cc (condensed). Since 1997 the signs placed by the ANWB have used a new font called ANWB-Uu. Signs of other manufacturers continued using the old fonts. Since 2015 the ANWB-Uu font is not used any more on new signs; it has been replaced by RWS-Ee and the newly-designed RWS-Dd (based on the FHWA series D).
In Russia, Channel One used this font for its clock ident from 1996 to 2000.[ citation needed ]
Variants of the font are used in Turkey, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia.
Derivative fonts include Interstate and Overpass. These fonts borrow heavily from the style of 'Highway Gothic', but have differences.
PBS, an American television network, between 2009 and 2019 used a custom derivative called, "PBS Explorer".[ citation needed ]
Samples of the Standard Alphabets For Traffic Control Devices are shown below.
Traffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of or above roads to give instructions or provide information to road users. The earliest signs were simple wooden or stone milestones. Later, signs with directional arms were introduced, for example the fingerposts in the United Kingdom and their wooden counterparts in Saxony.
The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways is a document issued by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) to specify the standards by which traffic signs, road surface markings, and signals are designed, installed, and used. In the United States, all traffic control devices must legally conform to these standards. The manual is used by state and local agencies as well as private construction firms to ensure that the traffic control devices they use conform to the national standard. While some state agencies have developed their own sets of standards, including their own MUTCDs, these must substantially conform to the federal MUTCD.
The U.S. Route shield is the highway marker used for United States Numbered Highways. Since the first U.S. Route signs were installed in 1926, the general idea has remained the same, but many changes have been made in the details. Originally, the shield included the name of the state in which the sign was erected and the letters "U S" on a shield-shaped sign. Over time, the shield has been simplified to consist of a white shield outline on a black square background, containing only a black route number. However, because each state is responsible for the production and maintenance of U.S. Route shields, several variants of the shield have existed over the years.
Clearview, also known as Clearview Hwy, is the name of a humanist sans-serif typeface family for guide signs used on roads in the United States, Canada, Indonesia, the Philippines, Israel, Brazil and Sri Lanka. It was developed by independent researchers with the help of the Texas Transportation Institute and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, under the supervision of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). It was once expected to replace the FHWA typefaces in many applications, although newer studies of its effectiveness have called its benefits into question.
A street name sign is a type of traffic sign used to identify named roads, generally those that do not qualify as expressways or highways. Street name signs are most often found posted at intersections; sometimes, especially in the United States, in perpendicularly oriented pairs identifying each of the crossing streets.
A highway shield or route marker is a sign denoting the route number of a highway, usually in the form of a symbolic shape with the route number enclosed. As the focus of the sign, the route number is usually the sign's largest element, with other items on the sign rendered in smaller sizes or contrasting colors. Highway shields are used by travellers, commuters, and all levels of government for identifying, navigating, and organising routes within a given jurisdiction. Simplified highway shields often appear on maps.
Transport is a sans serif typeface first designed for road signs in the United Kingdom. It was created between 1957 and 1963 by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert as part of their work as designers for the Department of Transport's Anderson and Worboys committees.
DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications.
Interstate is a digital typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones in the period 1993–1999, and licensed by Font Bureau. The typeface is based on Style Type E of the FHWA series of fonts, a signage alphabet drawn for the United States Federal Highway Administration by Dr. Theodore W. Forbes in 1949.
European traffic signs present relevant differences between countries despite an apparent uniformity and standardisation. Most European countries refer to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. The convention has been adopted by the following countries : Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. The convention has not been adopted by Andorra, Ireland, Iceland or Malta.
Toronto Subway is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed for the original section of the Toronto Transit Commission's Yonge subway. It is today used at station entrances, fare booths and track level signage throughout the system.
Road signs in Israel are regulated by the Ministry of Transportation in the Division of Transportation Planning, most recently set forth in June 2011.
Motorway is a sans-serif typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for use on the motorway network of the United Kingdom. Motorway was first used on the M6 Preston bypass in 1958 and has been in use on the UK's motorways ever since. The typeface is also used in some other countries, most notably Ireland and Portugal.
The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) conducts research in problem areas that affect highway planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance in the United States. Spearheaded by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), part of the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, it is jointly supported by federal agencies, state departments of transportation (DOTs), and other nonprofit organizations.
Road signs in Indonesia are standardized road signs similar to those used in other nations but with certain distinctions. As a former Dutch colony, until the 1970s road signs in Indonesia closely followed The Netherlands rules on road signs. Nowadays, Indonesian road sign design are a mix of European, US MUTCD, Australia, New Zealand and Japanese road sign features. According to the 2014 Minister of Transport's Regulation No. 13 concerning Traffic Signs, the official typeface for road signs in Indonesia is Clearview. Indonesia formerly used FHWA Series fonts as the designated typeface though the rules are not being implemented properly.
Overpass is a geometric sans-serif digital typeface, derived from Highway Gothic, but instead with a focus on usage as a webfont on digital screens for user interfaces and websites. It was designed by Delve Withrington with Dave Bailey, Thomas Jockin, Alan Dague-Greene, and Aaron Bell between 2011–2021. Overpass comprises 18 variants: 9 font weights and corrected obliques for each weight.
LLM Lettering is a set of sans-serif typefaces developed by the Malaysian Highway Authority and used for road signage on expressways in Malaysia. The font was divided into two types: LLM Normal (Standard/Regular) and LLM Narrow (Condensed). The LLM Normal typeface is a modified form of the Italian Alfabeto Normale and Alfabeto Stretto. The lettering is special use for the Malaysian Expressway System.
Polish road signs typeface is a geometrical typeface meant to making text on Polish road signs, according to Attachment 1 of Regulation on detailed technical conditions for road signs and signals as well as road safety devices and conditions for their placement on roads. The regulation defines a construction of digits, all of the letters of Polish alphabet and the letter V, and the punctuation marks: hyphen, round brackets, comma, full stop (period) and exclamation mark.
This article is a summary of traffic signs used in each country.