23) as he developed lettering for California roadsigns somewhere around 1939.
#Highway gothic fonts download driver#
Theodore Forbes “was reporting on studies of traffic sign visibility and legibility and was studying how driver responses were affected by sign-letter size and design, contrast, brightness, and placement” (p. Highway Gothic via Wikipedia Commons HistoryĪccording to Pioneers in Transportation (PDF warning), Dr. It was designed with older and aging eyes in mind.
Generally, the wider-set the letters, the better readability they have when a vehicle is moving at high speeds. There are a range of widths, from condensed to extended, called A (discontinued), B, C, D, E, EM, and F. The FHWA Series is part of the Federal Series of typefaces, or typefaces that follow very specific requirements for readability on light, dark, and reflective backgrounds day, night, high speeds, and low speeds. Today its digital approximation is called Highway Gothic. This collection of letters and numbers is known as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Series. It’s not a conspiracy it’s a sprawling stepchild. Road Trip SeasonĮver notice the typefaces on highway signage? How about interstates across the USA? How about all of North America? Did you notice it’s all over the world? With international adoption, the typeface received a lot of hype, and inspired several copycats. This post is part of a series called Hypefaces, where we explore the history around popular (and not-so-popular) typefaces.
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