A sign of something better

When designer Stuart de Rozario surveyed the fonts used in signage on London’s public transport systems, he reached a dead end. They seemed staid, sterile, lacking in personality, and ill-suited to use by modern brands.

He was pointed in another direction entirely. ‘The driving force behind my thoughts was to design something more current and fresh without compromising legibility and clarity. A font with both personality and function, that’s versatile and large and small sizes, and effortless to read, but which also says something new.’

Speed reading

Late for a meeting and can’t find your way? Trying to catch a flight? Lost in a hospital? Reading signs is a different business to reading a book or a newspaper. Text on signs needs to be deciphered quickly and effortlessly. So the legibility criteria for signage letterforms are different to those for normal reading, too.

Throughout FS Millbank’s uppercase and lowercase alphabets, characters have been given features for extra definition, including: wide ink traps on the A, K, M, V, W, X and Y; a serifed i, accentuated spurs on the a, d, l u; and different x-height shapes on the b, g, p and q.

Distinctive forms and generous, open internal shapes all help the quick reading of sign text, and wide, open terminals and counters allow similar letter shapes to be distinguished easily when viewed at different angles. Running down a corridor, maybe...

Positive/negative

Standard type tends to glow on the kind of dark backgrounds often used for signage, and look heavier than its true weight. To correct the imbalance caused by this optical trick, special weights of the typeface have to be drawn for these ‘negative’, light-on-dark applications.

These are lighter than their comparable positive weights to overcome the ‘glow’ effect. After extensive tests of the negative weights, at all sizes, we achieved the right optical balance. Glowing, glowing, gone.

Icons

This wouldn’t be a signage typeface without its own set of icons, or symbols, to help people find what they’re looking for. So, to sit alongside the positive and negative fonts, we’ve created a comprehensive set of 172 icons, covering a wide range of applications from transport and user interface to information and directional. Designed within the typeface capital height, they sit on the baseline and are spaced centrally.

Usually the "licensee" of font software license should be the end-user of the design solution, so the owner of the design solution must obtain the relevant authorization of the font used, and some authorization methods (such as desktop license) specify the number of terminals to be used, so all computers using the font for design or modification of the solution need to obtain authorization.

You can select or add "Licensee" information when you submit your order, and fill in your customer information in the "Licensee" form.

Windows system: Copy the font file directly to C:/Windows/Fonts, or right-click the font file and select "Install"; Mac system: Double-click the font file - click Install, or open "Applications "-"Font Book", drag the fonts into it.

Due to the operating system or software version, if you can't find the installed font in the software, we suggest you restart the system first, the font may be shown in the list as Chinese or English name, please look for it carefully, as long as the font is installed successfully, the font must exist in the font list.

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