[thelist] OT: Font Recommendation?

[Pauline Caldwell]

On 15 Oct 2005, at 17:51, aardvark wrote:

>
> care to just tell us what it says, so we don't have to register?

OK. I just wasn't sure about the etiquette in doing that, but here it  
is:

> 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 is Johnston 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 of New 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 some very 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 in  
> Johnston's Underground Type by Justin Howes.
>
> - Dov
>
> (Posted by Dov Isaacs, Principal Scientist,
> Publishing Technologies & Services Group,
> Adobe Systems Incorporated)

Pauline