Sunday, February 17, 2008

Q 5 If the USA replaced the lower typeface with the upper typeface, what are we talking about ?


A : These are typefaces for highway signage. The top typeface, Clearview Highway, will slowly replace the bottom one, Highway Gothic across Interstates in the US, according to the Federal Highway Adminstration approval in 2004.

Background trivia: Highway Gothic was created by the Public Roads Administration during WWII. Draft versions of this typeface was first used in 1942 for the Pentagon Road Network. The aim of the signage was legibility at high speeds.

Clearview was developed at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute in 1992 based on several considerations like legibility under glare and at speed, and compactness.

Additional trivia Other famous signage typefaces include :

Univers
Frutiger
Bruselline

References :

Yaffa, Joshua. The Road to Clarity. New York Times Magazine. August 11, 2007

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