87-478: Johnston (or Johnston Sans ) is a sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston . The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick , commercial manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (also known as 'The Underground Group'), as part of his plan to strengthen the company's corporate identity . Johnston was originally created for printing (with
174-508: A script typeface where a more decorative form was preferred. He made an attempt to promote the idea by commissioning the typeface Perpetua from Eric Gill with a sloped roman rather than an italic, but came to find the style unattractive; Perpetua's italic when finally issued had the conventional italic 'a', 'e' and 'f'. Morison wrote to his friend, type designer Jan van Krimpen , that in developing Perpetua's italic "we did not give enough slope to it. When we added more slope, it seemed that
261-427: A 'true' italic, others an oblique in which the letters are simply slanted, and some declining to offer one, perhaps concluding that an italic is inappropriate to the purpose of the original design. An official version of the typeface in italics was commissioned by London Transport from Berthold Wolpe in 1973. Johnston had become interested in sans-serif letters some years before the commission: although best known as
348-422: A book printed using this typeface shortly before starting work on his design and reproduced their structure in a textbook. Johnston's alphabet marked a break with the kinds of sans serif then popular, now normally known as grotesques , which tended to have squarer shapes inspired by signwriting and Didone type of the period. Some aspects of the alphabet are geometric: the letter O is a nearly perfect circle and
435-456: A calligrapher, he had written and worked also on custom lettering, and in his 1906 textbook Writing and Illuminating and Lettering had noted "It is quite possible to make a beautiful and characteristic alphabet of equal-stroke letters, on the lines of the so-called 'block letter' [the sans-serif letters of contemporary trade] but properly proportioned and finished." He had also written in spring 1913 that new books should "bear some living mark of
522-534: A characteristic arrow design. Paddington is a basic public domain digitisation by Stephen Moye, including italic, bold, and small caps designs. Its use has included the Tube map (sometimes hand-lettered), nameplates and general station signing, as well as much of the printed material issued by the Underground Group and its successors; also by the nationalised British Road Services in the immediate post-war era. It
609-417: A device for emphasis , due to their typically blacker type color . For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into three or four major groups, the fourth being the result of splitting the grotesque category into grotesque and neo-grotesque. This group features most of the early (19th century to early 20th) sans-serif designs. Influenced by Didone serif typefaces of
696-643: A lower-case 'L' with a curl or 'i' with serif under the dot. A particular subgenre of sans-serifs is those such as Rothbury, Britannic , Radiant , and National Trust with obvious variation in stroke width. These have been called 'modulated', 'stressed' or 'high-contrast' sans-serifs. They are nowadays often placed within the humanist genre, although they predate Johnston which started the modern humanist genre. These may take inspiration from sources outside printing such as brush lettering or calligraphy. Letters without serifs have been common in writing across history, for example in casual, non-monumental epigraphy of
783-459: A model for his own Gill Sans , released from 1928. As a corporate font, Johnston was not available for public licensing until recently, and as such Gill Sans has become more widely used. The capitals of the typeface are based on Roman square capitals such as those on the Column of Trajan , and the lower-case on traditional serif fonts. Johnston greatly admired Roman capitals, writing that they "held
870-518: A more unified range of styles than on previous designs, allowing a wider range of text to be set artistically through setting headings and body text in a single family. The style of design using asymmetric layouts, Helvetica and a grid layout extensively has been called the Swiss or International Typographic Style . This gallery presents images of sans-serif lettering and type across different times and places from early to recent. Particular attention
957-596: A planned height of 1 inch or 2.5 cm), but it rapidly became used for the enamel station signs of the Underground system as well. It has been the corporate font of public transport in London since the foundation of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, and of predecessor companies since its introduction in 1916, making its use one of the world's longest-lasting examples of corporate branding . It
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#17328802639261044-564: A result, printing done in the Latin alphabet for the first three hundred and fifty years of printing was "serif" in style, whether in blackletter , roman type , italic or occasionally script . The earliest printing typefaces which omitted serifs were not intended to render contemporary texts, but to represent inscriptions in Ancient Greek and Etruscan . Thus, Thomas Dempster 's De Etruria regali libri VII (1723), used special types intended for
1131-519: A special weight with distinctive modifications to allow better representation on low-resolution laser printers. The New Johnston Book weight was designed specifically for high volume publications and its usage was intended to be restricted to sizes below 12pt. In 2002 the typeface was digitised on behalf of Transport for London by Agfa Monotype Corporation, with the addition of two further weights, Book and Book Bold, as well as corresponding italic variants. The revised font family – not commercially available –
1218-771: A spurred "G" and an "R" with a curled leg. Capitals tend to be of relatively uniform width. Cap height and ascender height are generally the same to produce a more regular effect in texts such as titles with many capital letters, and descenders are often short for tighter line spacing. They often avoid having a true italic in favor of a more restrained oblique or sloped design, although at least some sans-serif true italics were offered. Examples of grotesque typefaces include Akzidenz-Grotesk , Venus , News Gothic , Franklin Gothic , IBM Plex and Monotype Grotesque . Akzidenz Grotesk Old Face, Knockout, Grotesque No. 9 and Monotype Grotesque are examples of digital fonts that retain more of
1305-417: A strong impact internationally: Helvetica came to be the most used typeface for the following decades. Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circles and squares. Common features are a nearly-circular capital 'O', sharp and pointed uppercase 'N' vertices, and a "single-storey" lowercase letter 'a'. The 'M' is often splayed and the capitals of varying width, following
1392-409: A study of Schelter & Giesecke specimens; Mosley describes this as "thoroughly discredited"; even in 1986 Walter Tracy described the claimed dates as "on stylistic grounds ... about forty years too early". Sans-serif lettering and typefaces were popular due to their clarity and legibility at distance in advertising and display use, when printed very large or small. Because sans-serif type
1479-1094: A total of fifteen typefaces. In 1997, London Transport Museum licensed the original Johnston typeface exclusively to P22 Type Foundry , available commercially, first under the name of Johnston Underground and then in an expanded version called Underground Pro. P22's design is not based on New Johnston, having principally the goal of digitising and expanding on the original Johnston designs. The full Underground Pro Set contains nineteen Pro OpenType fonts and 58 Basic OpenType fonts, covering extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic character sets. Weights are expanded to six: Thin, Light, Book, Medium, Demi, Heavy. Underground, Underground CY, Underground GR support extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek characters respectively. The Latin sub-family contains medium weight Titling fonts, which feature underscored and/or overscored Latin small letters. Pro fonts include extensive OpenType features, including eleven stylistic sets with stylistic alternates inspired by early signs, Johnston's calligraphy and draft designs for Johnston and geometric sans designs such as Futura. Following
1566-608: A typeface expressly designed to be suitable for both display and body text. Some humanist designs may be more geometric, as in Gill Sans and Johnston (especially their capitals), which like Roman capitals are often based on perfect squares, half-squares and circles, with considerable variation in width. These somewhat architectural designs may feel too stiff for body text. Others such as Syntax , Goudy Sans and Sassoon Sans more resemble handwriting, serif typefaces or calligraphy. Frutiger , from 1976, has been particularly influential in
1653-411: A variety of eccentricities, such as a capital-form 'q' in the lower-case and a single-storey 'a' like that later seen on Futura , before ultimately discarding them in favour of a clean, simplified design. However, many early versions of Johnston's "alphabet" included a Garamond -style W formed of two crossed 'V's, and some early renderings as hand-lettering showed variation. Unlike many sans-serifs of
1740-552: Is American Type Founders' Bookman, offered in some releases with the oblique of its metal type version. An unusual example of an oblique font from the inter-war period is the display face Koch Antiqua . With a partly oblique lower case, it also makes the italic capitals inline in the style of blackletter capitals in the larger sizes of the metal type. It was developed by Rudolph Koch, a type designer who had previously specialised in to blackletter font design (which does not use italics); Walter Tracy described his design as "uninhibited by
1827-550: Is called Egyptian Characters ". Around 1816, the Ordnance Survey began to use 'Egyptian' lettering, monoline sans-serif capitals, to mark ancient Roman sites. This lettering was printed from copper plate engraving. Around 1816, William Caslon IV produced the first sans-serif printing type in England for the Latin alphabet, a capitals-only face under the title 'Two Lines English Egyptian' , where 'Two Lines English' referred to
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#17328802639261914-693: Is especially true with grotesque designs like Helvetica , which have a spare, industrial aesthetic, and geometric ones like Futura . (As many sans-serif fonts were intended for use on headings and posters, especially early ones, some were not designed with italics at all because these were considered unnecessary.) Humanist sans-serif typefaces, however, often use true italic styles since they are more influenced by calligraphy and traditional serif fonts. Notable humanist sans-serif typefaces include Gill Sans , Goudy Sans , FF Meta and FF Scala Sans ; all have italic designs. Adrian Frutiger and other prominent designers have defended obliques as more appropriate for
2001-543: Is generally a fundamental design choice about how the font should look. A font designer normally decides to design their font with one or the other. Historically, it was normal for all Latin-alphabet serif fonts to have true italics, but in the late nineteenth century some "sloped romans" were created by European and American foundries, particularly for display type and headings. Notable typefaces in this style include Bookman Old Style in metal type (although not many recent versions), Linn Boyd Benton 's "self-spacing" type and
2088-458: Is given to unusual uses and more obscure typefaces, meaning this gallery should not be considered a representative sampling. Oblique type Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type . Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type , except slanted. Oblique and italic type are technical terms to distinguish between
2175-440: Is known as 'New Johnston TfL'. In the early stages of digitisation, there was the chronic problem in letter-spacing, which seems to be solved more or less by now. A further change occurred in 2008 when Transport for London removed the serif from the numeral '1' and also altered the '4', in both cases reverting them to their original appearance. New Johnston's numerals are originally designed to fit for setting tabular matters, which
2262-584: Is not a conventional feature on grotesque and neo-grotesque designs. Due to the diversity of sans-serif typefaces, many do not exactly fit into the above categories. For example, Neuzeit S has both neo-grotesque and geometric influences, as does Hermann Zapf 's URW Grotesk . Whitney blends humanist and grotesque influences, while Klavika is a geometric design not based on the circle. Sans-serif typefaces intended for signage, such as Transport and Tern (both used on road signs), may have unusual features to enhance legibility and differentiate characters, such as
2349-498: Is one that does not have extending features called " serifs " at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism . For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque , § Neo-grotesque , § Geometric , § Humanist , and § Other or mixed . Sans-serif typefaces have become
2436-448: Is that sans-serifs are based on either " fat face typefaces " or slab-serifs with the serifs removed. It is now known that the inspiration was more classical antiquity, and sans-serifs appeared before the first dated appearance of slab-serif letterforms in 1810. The Schelter & Giesecke foundry also claimed during the 1920s to have been offering a sans-serif with lower-case by 1825. Wolfgang Homola dated it in 2004 to 1882 based on
2523-509: The classical model . The geometric sans originated in Germany in the 1920s. Two early efforts in designing geometric types were made by Herbert Bayer and Jakob Erbar , who worked respectively on Universal Typeface (unreleased at the time but revived digitally as Architype Bayer ) and Erbar ( c. 1925 ). In 1927 Futura , by Paul Renner , was released to great acclaim and popularity. Geometric sans-serif typefaces were popular from
2610-498: The "astonishing" effect the unusual style had on the public. The lettering style apparently became referred to as "old Roman" or "Egyptian" characters, referencing the classical past and a contemporary interest in Ancient Egypt and its blocky, geometric architecture. Mosley writes that "in 1805 Egyptian letters were happening in the streets of London, being plastered over shops and on walls by signwriters, and they were astonishing
2697-467: The 'M', unlike Roman capitals (but like Caslon) straight-sided. As with most serif fonts, the 'g' is a 'two-storey' design. The 'l' copies the curl of the 't' and produces a rather wide letter compared to most sans-serif fonts. The lower case i and j have diagonally-placed square dots or tittles , a motif that in some digitisations is repeated in the full stop , commas , apostrophes and other punctuation marks . Johnston's design process considered
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2784-768: The (generally wider) slab serif and "fat faces" of the period. It also added a lower-case. The term "grotesque" comes from the Italian word for cave , and was often used to describe Roman decorative styles found by excavation, but had long become applied in the modern sense for objects that appeared "malformed or monstrous". The term "grotesque" became commonly used to describe sans-serifs. Similar condensed sans-serif display typefaces, often capitals-only, became very successful. Sans-serif printing types began to appear thereafter in France and Germany. A few theories about early sans-serifs now known to be incorrect may be mentioned here. One
2871-430: The 1920s and 1930s due to their clean, modern design, and many new geometric designs and revivals have been developed since. Notable geometric types of the period include Kabel , Semplicità , Bernhard Gothic , Nobel and Metro ; more recent designs in the style include ITC Avant Garde , Brandon Grotesque , Gotham , Avenir , Product Sans , HarmonyOS Sans and Century Gothic . Many geometric sans-serif alphabets of
2958-412: The 1960s due to the limited availability of Johnston metal type. It also used Gill Sans for printed ephemera, such as timetables. This variant was commissioned by Frank Pick as a wedge-serif variation of the organisation's standard sans-serif Johnston face and was designed by Percy Delf Smith , a former pupil of Edward Johnston; Johnston had considered a wedge-serif design during the early stages of
3045-580: The Central Type Foundry's "De Vinne" wedge-serif display face. European examples included Genzsch Antiqua from Genzsch & Heyse . Almost all modern serif fonts have true italic designs. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of type foundries such as American Type Founders and Genzsch & Heyse offered serif typefaces with oblique rather than italic designs, especially display typefaces, but these designs (such as Genzsch Antiqua) have mostly disappeared. An exception
3132-452: The Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis." Similarly, the painter Joseph Farington wrote in his diary on 13 September 1805 of seeing a memorial engraved "in what
3219-473: The Futura, Erbar and Kabel tradition include Bank Gothic , DIN 1451 , Eurostile and Handel Gothic , along with many of the typefaces designed by Ray Larabie . Humanist sans-serif typefaces take inspiration from traditional letterforms, such as Roman square capitals , traditional serif typefaces and calligraphy. Many have true italics rather than an oblique , ligatures and even swashes in italic. One of
3306-614: The LPTB mentioned it as a package promoting the system's billboards to advertisers as an example of its commitment to stylish design, along with its commission of art from Feliks Topolski . Johnston's drawings survive in the Victoria and Albert Museum . Johnston's original design came with two weights, ordinary and bold , while condensed letters soon followed for use on buses to show routes and destinations. Heavy does not contain lower-case letters. Johnston also worked on other lettering and branding for
3393-519: The Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture), by Peter Behrens , in 1900. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sans-serif types were viewed with suspicion by many printers, especially those of fine book printing , as being fit only for advertisements (if that), and to this day most books remain printed in serif typefaces as body text. This impression would not have been helped by
3480-473: The US in 1981–82, New Johnston finally became ready for Linotron photo-typesetting machine, and first appeared in London's Underground stations in 1983. It is the official typeface exclusively used by Transport for London and The Mayor of London ever since. The New Johnston Medium as the new standard is slightly heavier or bolder than the original Johnston Regular (or sometimes confusingly called Medium) and lighter than
3567-523: The Underground system, most famously the 'bar and circle' roundel that the Underground continues to use (refined from earlier designs where the roundel was solid red) . The font family was called a variety of names in its early years, such as Underground or Johnston's Railway Type, before later being generally called simply Johnston. (A similar problem exists with Gill Sans, which was at first often referred to by other names such as its order number, Series 238, Gill Sans-serif, or Monotype Sans-serif.) Johnston
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3654-545: The aesthetic of sans-serif fonts, while Martin Majoor has supported the use of true italics. Some computer programs handling text may simply generate an oblique form, a "fake italic", by slanting the normal font when they find no italic or oblique style installed. It may not be clear to the user where the oblique form comes from (whether it is a correctly installed oblique font or an automatically slanted design, which may look worse) unless they check their installed fonts. Slanting
3741-489: The authentic lettering of the finest periods" and belong "unmistakably to the twentieth century". Pick considered a sans-serif best suited to transport use, concluding that the Column of Trajan capitals were not suited to reproduction on flat surfaces. In 1933, The Underground Group was absorbed by the London Passenger Transport Board and the typeface was adopted as part of the London Transport brand. As early as 1937,
3828-543: The classical period. However, Roman square capitals , the inspiration for much Latin-alphabet lettering throughout history, had prominent serifs. While simple sans-serif letters have always been common in "uncultured" writing and sometimes even in epigraphy, such as basic handwriting, most artistically-authored letters in the Latin alphabet, both sculpted and printed, since the Middle Ages have been inspired by fine calligraphy, blackletter writing and Roman square capitals . As
3915-532: The commission. The typeface was originally used for the headquarters building at 55 Broadway , SW1, and some early 1930s Underground stations. It can only be seen on some signs at Sudbury Town on the Piccadilly line. In early 2007, a digitisation of the typeface was developed by Transport for London under the name Johnston Delf Smith for its own use on historic signs. It is the property of TfL. Designer Matthieu Cortat has released an unrelated implementation of
4002-663: The condensed forms of the contemporary sans cuttings of the last thirty years." Leading type designer Adrian Frutiger wrote in 1961 on designing a new face, Univers , on the nineteenth-century model: "Some of these old sans-serifs have had a real renaissance within the last twenty years, once the reaction of the 'New Objectivity' had been overcome. A purely geometrical form of type is unsustainable." Of this period in Britain, Mosley has commented that in 1960 "orders unexpectedly revived" for Monotype's eccentric Monotype Grotesque design: "[it] represents, even more evocatively than Univers,
4089-401: The design commercially, under the name Petit Serif. A new version, known as Johnston 100 , was commissioned by Transport for London from Monotype in 2016 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the typeface. It includes two new weights, 'Hairline' and 'Thin', for digital use, as well as symbols such as the hash character # . Several characters have been changed, such as
4176-475: The design was "cruder but much larger" than its predecessor, making it a success. Thereafter sans-serif capitals rapidly began to be issued from London typefounders. Much imitated was the Thorowgood "grotesque" face of the early 1830s. This was arrestingly bold and highly condensed, quite unlike the classical proportions of Caslon's design, but very suitable for poster typography and similar in aesthetic effect to
4263-920: The development of the modern humanist sans genre, especially designs intended to be particularly legible above all other design considerations. The category expanded greatly during the 1980s and 1990s, partly as a reaction against the overwhelming popularity of Helvetica and Univers and also due to the need for legible computer fonts on low-resolution computer displays. Designs from this period intended for print use include FF Meta , Myriad , Thesis , Charlotte Sans , Bliss , Skia and Scala Sans , while designs developed for computer use include Microsoft's Tahoma , Trebuchet , Verdana , Calibri and Corbel , as well as Lucida Grande , Fira Sans and Droid Sans . Humanist sans-serif designs can (if appropriately proportioned and spaced) be particularly suitable for use on screen or at distance, since their designs can be given wide apertures or separation between strokes, which
4350-408: The diamond tittle , differing from Johnston's original design, enhancing the identity of London Transport. In 1990–1992 Banks and Miles, in partnership with Signus Limited digitised the first PostScript Type 1 fonts for the then London Transport under the auspices of the corporate design manager, Roger Hughes. Hughes and Jeremy Rewse-Davies, LT's design director, also commissioned New Johnston Book,
4437-551: The earliest humanist designs was Edward Johnston 's Johnston typeface from 1916, and, a decade later, Gill Sans ( Eric Gill , 1928). Edward Johnston, a calligrapher by profession, was inspired by classic letter forms, especially the capital letters on the Column of Trajan . Humanist designs vary more than gothic or geometric designs. Some humanist designs have stroke modulation (strokes that clearly vary in width along their line) or alternating thick and thin strokes. These include most popularly Hermann Zapf 's Optima (1958),
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#17328802639264524-457: The early twentieth century, an increase in popularity of sans-serif typefaces took place as more artistic sans-serif designs were released. While he disliked sans-serif typefaces in general, the American printer J. L. Frazier wrote of Copperplate Gothic in 1925 that "a certain dignity of effect accompanies ... due to the absence of anything in the way of frills", making it a popular choice for
4611-409: The eccentricities of some of the early sans-serif types. According to Monotype, the term "grotesque" originates from Italian : grottesco , meaning "belonging to the cave" due to their simple geometric appearance. The term arose because of adverse comparisons that were drawn with the more ornate Modern Serif and Roman typefaces that were the norm at the time. Neo-grotesque designs appeared in
4698-482: The font required a little more cursive to it." A few other type designers replicated his approach for a time: van Krimpen's Romulus and William Addison Dwiggins ' Electra were both released with obliques. Morison's Times New Roman typeface has a very traditional true italic in the style of the late eighteenth century, which he later wryly commented owed "more to Didot than dogma". Many sans-serif typefaces use plainer oblique designs instead of italic ones. This
4785-405: The fresh revolutionary breeze that began to blow through typography in the early sixties" and "its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the ... prettiness of Gill Sans". By the 1960s, neo-grotesque typefaces such as Univers and Helvetica had become popular through reviving the nineteenth-century grotesques while offering
4872-546: The hooked 1 and uses side-pointed 4. In November 2002, the typeface was rereleased in OpenType format, which also expanded the font family to include italic fonts (resembling those of Gill Sans) in all weights. OpenType features include alternates, case forms, small caps (romans only), old style figure. Separate small caps (romans only) and old style figure faces were also released for each weight in TrueType and PostScript formats, for
4959-569: The lead of Johnston's original, P22 decided not to offer an italic. The original Johnston Underground digitisation included Regular, Bold, and Extras weights, with the Extra containing only ornamental symbols. Railway Sans is an open-source interpretation of Johnston's original (regular weight) by Justin Howes and Greg Fleming. It includes a number of alternate glyphs such as a Garamond -inspired W (used on old signs at West Brompton station ), ligatures and
5046-529: The leading expert on early revival of sans-serif letters, has found that architect John Soane commonly used sans-serif letters on his drawings and architectural designs. Soane's inspiration was apparently the inscriptions dedicating the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy , with minimal serifs. These were then copied by other artists, and in London sans-serif capitals became popular for advertising, apparently because of
5133-491: The mid-twentieth century as an evolution of grotesque types. They are relatively straightforward in appearance with limited stroke width variation. Similar to grotesque typefaces, neo-grotesques often feature capitals of uniform width and a quite 'folded-up' design, in which strokes (for example on the 'c') are curved all the way round to end on a perfect horizontal or vertical. Helvetica is an example of this. Unlike earlier grotesque designs, many were issued in large families from
5220-524: The most prevalent for display of text on computer screens. On lower-resolution digital displays, fine details like serifs may disappear or appear too large. The term comes from the French word sans , meaning "without" and "serif" of uncertain origin, possibly from the Dutch word schreef meaning "line" or pen-stroke. In printed media, they are more commonly used for display use and less for body text . Before
5307-533: The original Bold, and has a larger x-height , made suitable for main text setting as well as large display sizes. The average x-height of the New Johnston is roughly 7% larger than the original as the limit for keeping the original Johnston flavour, which was fundamental. The larger x-height allowed larger counters, and type size (size of x-height in particular) and weight are reciprocal factors for legibility, but enlarging x-height can affect style and appearance. Since
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#17328802639265394-457: The original Johnston weights, Regular and Bold, were maintained as closely as possible, inevitably New Johnston Medium appears very close to Light and Bold. This is the whole point of this particular solution because New Johnston Medium works as the one-fits-all standard font for virtually every application from large type sizes for posters and signs to minute type sizes for pocket map maintaining much improved legibility. Punctuation marks are matched
5481-607: The period and sign painting traditions, these were often quite solid, bold designs suitable for headlines and advertisements. The early sans-serif typefaces often did not feature a lower case or italics , since they were not needed for such uses. They were sometimes released by width, with a range of widths from extended to normal to condensed, with each style different, meaning to modern eyes they can look quite irregular and eccentric. Grotesque typefaces have limited variation of stroke width (often none perceptible in capitals). The terminals of curves are usually horizontal, and many have
5568-500: The period, Johnston's design (while not slender) is not particularly bold. Gill would later write of his admiration for how Johnston had "redeemed" the sans-serif from its "nineteenth-century corruption" of extreme boldness. As an alphabet intended for signage, Johnston was designed without any italics . Any italic design seen is therefore an invention of a later designer, intended to match Johnston's design. Different designers have chosen different approaches to achieve this: some offering
5655-608: The period, such as those authored by the Bauhaus art school (1919–1933) and modernist poster artists, were hand-lettered and not cut into metal type at the time. A separate inspiration for many types described "geometric" in design has been the simplified shapes of letters engraved or stenciled on metal and plastic in industrial use, which often follow a simplified structure and are sometimes known as "rectilinear" for their use of straight vertical and horizontal lines. Designs which have been called geometric in principles but not descended from
5742-504: The proportions of counters and the thick-and-thin quality of strokes from the regular design. Type designers have described oblique type as less organic and calligraphic than italics, which in some situations may be preferred. Contemporary type designer Jeremy Tankard stated that he had avoided a true italic 'a' and 'e' in his design Bliss due to finding them "too soft", while Hoefler and Frere-Jones have described obliques as more "keen and insistent". Italic designs are not just
5829-465: The public, who had never seen letters like them and were not sure they wanted to". A depiction of the style, as an engraving, rather than printed from type, was shown in the European Magazine of 1805, described as "old Roman" characters. However, the style did not become used in printing for some more years. (Early sans-serif signage was not printed from type but hand-painted or carved, since at
5916-654: The representation of Etruscan epigraphy , and in c. 1745 , the Caslon foundry made Etruscan types for pamphlets written by Etruscan scholar John Swinton . Another niche used of a printed sans-serif letterform from 1786 onwards was a rounded sans-serif script typeface developed by Valentin Haüy for the use of the blind to read with their fingers. Towards the end of the eighteenth century neoclassicism led to architects increasingly incorporating ancient Greek and Roman designs in contemporary structures. Historian James Mosley ,
6003-501: The restoration of the diagonal bowl on the lowercase 'g' which was lost in New Johnston. The font is designed to reflect Johnston's original intentions, and to be closer to the original version of the Johnston typeface. Several digitisations of the Johnston type exist. International Typeface Corporation released a variant in 1999 called ITC Johnston . It originally included three font weights like New Johnston, however it does not include
6090-434: The slanted version of the regular (roman) style; they are influenced by handwriting, with a single-storey a and an f that descends below the line of text. Some may even link up, like cursive (joined-up) handwriting. Obliques by contrast are "simply" sloped. In addition, italic styles are often quite noticeably narrower than roman type, while oblique styles are not. Few typefaces have both oblique and italic designs, as this
6177-781: The spirit of modernity, using the German slogan " die Schrift unserer Zeit " ("the typeface of our time") and in English "the typeface of today and tomorrow" ; many typefaces were released under its influence as direct clones, or at least offered with alternate characters allowing them to imitate it if desired. In the post-war period, an increase of interest took place in "grotesque" sans-serifs. Writing in The Typography of Press Advertisement (1956), printer Kenneth Day commented that Stephenson Blake's eccentric Grotesque series had returned to popularity for having "a personality sometimes lacking in
6264-450: The standard of common sans-serif types of the period, many of which now seem somewhat lumpy and eccentrically-shaped. In 1922, master printer Daniel Berkeley Updike described sans-serif typefaces as having "no place in any artistically respectable composing-room." In 1937 he stated that he saw no need to change this opinion in general, though he felt that Gill Sans and Futura were the best choices if sans-serifs had to be used. Through
6351-529: The stationery of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. As Updike's comments suggest, the new, more constructed humanist and geometric sans-serif designs were viewed as increasingly respectable, and were shrewdly marketed in Europe and America as embodying classic proportions (with influences of Roman capitals) while presenting a spare, modern image. Futura in particular was extensively marketed by Bauer and its American distribution arm by brochure as capturing
6438-458: The supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions." Justin Howes , author of the leading work on the Johnston Sans design, Johnston's Underground Type , has highlighted the similarity of the design to the eighteenth-century Caslon type designed by William Caslon in particular, noting that Johnston had worked on
6525-476: The term "sans-serif" became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these terms for sans-serif was "grotesque", often used in Europe, and " gothic ", which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in typeface names like News Gothic , Highway Gothic , Franklin Gothic or Trade Gothic . Sans-serif typefaces are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as
6612-477: The time in which we live." Johnston had previously unsuccessfully attempted to enter type design, a trade which at the time normally made designs in-house. Howes wrote that Johnston's font was "the first typeface to have been designed for day-to-day use by a leading artist-craftsman." Pick specified to Johnston that he wanted a typeface that would ensure that the Underground Group's posters would not be mistaken for advertisements; it should have "the bold simplicity of
6699-565: The time it was not possible to print in large sizes. This makes tracing the descent of sans-serif styles hard, since a trend can arrive in the dated, printed record from a signpainting tradition which has left less of a record or at least no dates.) The inappropriateness of the name was not lost on the poet Robert Southey , in his satirical Letters from England written in the character of a Spanish aristocrat. It commented: "The very shopboards must be ... painted in Egyptian letters, which, as
6786-479: The time of release. Neo-grotesque type began in the 1950s with the emergence of the International Typographic Style , or Swiss style. Its members looked at the clear lines of Akzidenz-Grotesk (1898) as an inspiration for designs with a neutral appearance and an even colour on the page. In 1957 the release of Helvetica , Univers , and Folio , the first typefaces categorized as neo-grotesque, had
6873-405: The traditions of roman and italic". The printing historian and artistic director Stanley Morison was for a time in the inter-war period interested in the oblique type style, which he felt stood out in text less than a true italic and should supersede it. He argued in his article Towards an Ideal Italic that serif book typefaces should have as the default sloped form an oblique and as a complement
6960-406: The two ways of creating slanted font styles; oblique designs may be labelled italic by companies selling fonts or by computer programs. Oblique designs may also be called slanted or sloped roman styles. Oblique fonts, as supplied by a font designer, may be simply slanted, but this is often not the case: many have slight corrections made to them to give curves more consistent widths, so they retain
7047-447: The typeface's body size, which equals to about 28 points. Although it is known from its appearances in the firm's specimen books, no uses of it from the period have been found; Mosley speculates that it may have been commissioned by a specific client. A second hiatus in interest in sans-serif appears to have lasted for about twelve years, until Vincent Figgins ' foundry of London issued a new sans-serif in 1828. David Ryan felt that
7134-449: Was used for wayfinding signs at the London 2012 Summer Olympics and Summer Paralympics , including venues outside London. It was also used for the signs that accompanied the parade of nations during the opening ceremony . Sans-serif In typography and lettering , a sans-serif , sans serif ( / ˈ s æ n ( z ) ˈ s ɛ r ɪ f / ), gothic , or simply sans letterform
7221-448: Was a copyrighted property of the LPTB's successor, Transport for London , until Public Domain Day 2015 (Johnston died in 1944). Johnston's work originated the genre of the humanist sans-serif typeface , typefaces that are sans-serif but take inspiration from traditional serif fonts and Roman inscriptions. His student Eric Gill , who worked on the development of the typeface, later used it as
7308-538: Was often used for headings and commercial printing, many early sans-serif designs did not feature lower-case letters. Simple sans-serif capitals, without use of lower-case, became very common in uses such as tombstones of the Victorian period in Britain. The first use of sans-serif as a running text has been proposed to be the short booklet Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of
7395-624: Was originally printed using wood type for large signs and metal type for print. London Transport often did not use Johnston for general small printing, with many documents such as bus timetables using other typefaces such as Gill Sans and Granby . By the 1970s, as cold type was becoming the norm for printing, Johnston had become difficult for printers to use. Signs and posters of the period started to use other, more easily sourced typefaces such as Helvetica , Univers and News Gothic . To maintain London Transport's old corporate identity, Johnston
7482-532: Was rendered into cold type. Rather than simply producing a phototype of the original design, Johnston was redesigned in 1979 by Eiichi Kono at Banks & Miles to produce New Johnston . The new family comes in eight members: Light, Medium, Bold weights with corresponding Italics, Medium Condensed and Bold Condensed (the old family had only two weights: Regular and Bold, and the latter had no lowercase letters). After all precisely hand-drawn letters (nearly 1,000) were completed and sent to AlphaType for digitisation in
7569-471: Was requested by TfL. As a proprietary typeface (one of the first ever), Johnston did not become commercially available in metal type. However, capitalising on the popularity of the design style after Gill Sans had become popular, the typefounders Stephenson Blake , who cast the Johnston metal type, created a similar but not identical design, Granby for sale. According to Mike Ashworth of Transport for London , London Transport itself made some use of Granby by
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