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Type that has to work on a pole, picked by hand.
Signs are the hardest job a typeface ever gets. Read in a second, from 40 metres away, at night, at an angle, often from a moving car. This week: four things sign makers learned the hard way, and five identities that leave the screen and go up on poles, walls and pavements.
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WHAT SIGNS TAUGHT TYPE
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1936
Germany had a width axis long before variable fonts.
DIN 1451 grew out of a 1905 Prussian railway lettering template, became a German standard in 1936 and went onto the new Autobahn signs in 1938. It came in narrow, medium and wide versions, drawn on a grid so a sign painter with a compass and a ruler could rebuild it. The wide one fell out of use in the early 1980s; the narrow and medium ones are still on German roads. Microsoft’s first variable font, Bahnschrift, is a DIN.
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25 mm
Every 10 metres of distance needs about 25 mm of letter.
That’s the starting point wayfinding designers use: 50 mm to read a sign from 20 metres, 100 mm from 40. A short x-height, low contrast, glare, speed and older eyes all push it up. Then you print a mock-up, put it on the wall and walk away from it.
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+6%
White letters glow at night.
Headlights make reflective white letters spread into their own gaps, so closed shapes like e and a start to fill in. Clearview, drawn for US highway signs, opened those shapes up and raised the x-height, and early tests showed about 6% more reading distance. In 2016 the US highway agency dropped it, saying brighter sign sheeting matters more than the font. In 2018 it was back, written into a federal spending law.
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0 px
A sign that changes can’t move.
On the old Solari departure boards every character had its own flap of the same size, so a line never shifted when it updated. Screens brought the problem back: switch “On time” to a bold “Boarding” and a normal font gets wider and pushes everything next to it. Uniwidth type keeps every weight on the same width, which is how Unifora, this issue’s sponsor, is built.
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TYPEFACES THAT STARTED ON SIGNS |
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1916
Johnston
London Underground
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1936
DIN 1451
German railways and roads
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1960s
Transport
British roads
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1972
Roissy
Charles de Gaulle Airport, later sold as Frutiger
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FIVE IDENTITIES THAT LIVE ON SIGNS
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The New York Times Food Festival by Base Design
The Times brought its food festival back in 2022, and Base Design signed it like a small city: arrow boards, a red stall directory and a sign that says Worth the Wait.
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Burger King by Jones Knowles Ritchie
The flat bun logo and chunky custom type, made to read from the highway at the top of a pole.
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Fenway Center by Mubien Brands
A Boston development built over the Mass Pike. The flag-shaped F turns into wayfinding pylons.
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Naolib by Graphéine
One name for every tram, bus, bike and car park in Nantes, with the n on round stop signs.
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Bristol Dockyards by How & How
Home of Brunel’s SS Great Britain. Banners, painted walls and BD arrows set into the cobbles.
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Made by Vadim Carazan · © 2026 BRRRANDING
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