This summer, while on vacation in the UK, I spent a few hours in the London Transport Museum. Surprisingly enough, in their gift shop, two items for sale attracted my attention. One was a book and the other, a collection of fonts!
Every so often, the question comes up on this forum and others as to exactly what font is used in the London Underground. The book in question,Johnston's Underground Type by Justin Howes definitively answers that question and provides quite a bit of background on the subject.
To summarize, the basis of the font used today isJohnston Sans, dating back to 1916. Johnston Sans also had an upper case-only bold face. These two faces were used with various modifications until 1988 when the font was modernized with the release ofNew Johnston, a family of nine typefaces based upon Johnston Sans. The family includes light, light italic, medium, medium italic, medium condensed, bold, bold italic, bold condensed, and stencil weights / styles. New Johnston Medium most closely resembles the original Johnston Sans face in terms of weight and style.
Neither the original Johnston Sans nor the current New Johnston are licensed by London Transport for any external use.
However, at the London Transport Museum (and I believe on-line from the P22 Type Foundry), you can purchase a license and media for P22's rendition of Johnston Sans including three faces - P22 Underground, P22 Underground Bold (uppercase only), and P22 Underground Extras (symbols associated with London Transport over the years). Included on the CDROM are both Type 1 and TrueType versions of the typefaces in both Windows and Macintosh formats. The designs were officially licensed from London Transport. The EULA (End User License Agreement) carries somevery strict restrictions with regards to embedding in PDF or any other file type as well as commercial use of any printed output formatted with these typefaces.
A fairly close (and less restrictively-licensed alternative) to the P22 package or for Johnston Sans and New Johnston (neither of which are available for license) is ITC Johnston, available in Type 1 and TrueType versions in both Windows and Macintosh formats. Fifteen individual typefaces are available including old style figures and small caps, italic styles, as well as light, medium, and bold weights. Alas, they are not (yet) available in OpenType format.
In any case, further information and background is available inJohnston's Underground Type by Justin Howes.
- Dov
Every so often, the question comes up on this forum and others as to exactly what font is used in the London Underground. The book in question,Johnston's Underground Type by Justin Howes definitively answers that question and provides quite a bit of background on the subject.
To summarize, the basis of the font used today isJohnston Sans, dating back to 1916. Johnston Sans also had an upper case-only bold face. These two faces were used with various modifications until 1988 when the font was modernized with the release ofNew Johnston, a family of nine typefaces based upon Johnston Sans. The family includes light, light italic, medium, medium italic, medium condensed, bold, bold italic, bold condensed, and stencil weights / styles. New Johnston Medium most closely resembles the original Johnston Sans face in terms of weight and style.
Neither the original Johnston Sans nor the current New Johnston are licensed by London Transport for any external use.
However, at the London Transport Museum (and I believe on-line from the P22 Type Foundry), you can purchase a license and media for P22's rendition of Johnston Sans including three faces - P22 Underground, P22 Underground Bold (uppercase only), and P22 Underground Extras (symbols associated with London Transport over the years). Included on the CDROM are both Type 1 and TrueType versions of the typefaces in both Windows and Macintosh formats. The designs were officially licensed from London Transport. The EULA (End User License Agreement) carries somevery strict restrictions with regards to embedding in PDF or any other file type as well as commercial use of any printed output formatted with these typefaces.
A fairly close (and less restrictively-licensed alternative) to the P22 package or for Johnston Sans and New Johnston (neither of which are available for license) is ITC Johnston, available in Type 1 and TrueType versions in both Windows and Macintosh formats. Fifteen individual typefaces are available including old style figures and small caps, italic styles, as well as light, medium, and bold weights. Alas, they are not (yet) available in OpenType format.
In any case, further information and background is available inJohnston's Underground Type by Justin Howes.
- Dov