I was hoping for your help with something.

[mariejulien@mastodon.social]

@mwichary I don't know, i suppose that's just "yet another font" for people. We have also the Roissy font by Frutiger (for… well the Roissy Charles de Gaulle Paris airport )

[adamrice@c.im]

@mwichary There aren’t as many typefaces for Japanese as there are for the Latin alphabet, for obvious reasons, but there is of course a strong tradition of hand-lettering. There’s one particular lettering style called futomoji (literally “fat letters”) that traditionally is only used on sumo posters. Here’s an example of a sumo rankings table: https://www.kosho.or.jp/upload/save_image/26020250/20210924170531519305_30fd1f9fe4a0b34c207b0216c368c01e.jpg

[grwster@mastodon.social]

@mwichary These old Yosemite trail signs cut out of steel are pretty distinctive. They're maybe found in other older US National Parks, not sure.

[valentine@flickering.style]

@mwichary
The street name font for the sidewalk tiles in New Orleans.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/street-name-tiles-of-new-orleans

[se_davidobrien@mastodon.scot]

It’s based on Gill Sans, I think, with a bit of tweaking for screens.

It eases readability on the website.

It’s the default font so probably seen by hundreds of millions of people every day.

There’s a serif version too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/introducing-bbc-reith

@mwichary

[mwichary@mastodon.online]

@valentine Thank you!!!

[acb@mastodon.social]

@mwichary I do have a soft spot for the sans used on street signs in Berlin, and particularly the distinctive fz-ligature eszett. Modernism meets topographical history.

[cynthiarose@sfba.social]

@mwichary Rockridge station? That looks like the view from Rockridge

[aschmitz@ostatus.lardbucket.org]

@mwichary I don't have any specific ones that come to mind, but I could swear it was pretty common downtown. Maybe I'm mostly thinking of PSAs on those animated billboards in the Loop? Which would be mostly city-generated, presumably. But I could swear I've seen it on various signs walking around, too. (Mostly because shouty narrowish fonts with oversized ink traps seem to be "in" these days, so maybe I've mentally lumped it in with something else too.)

[valentine@flickering.style]

@mwichary
Famous enough to where a local company makes refrigerator alphabet tile sets.

https://dirtycoast.com/products/new-orleans-street-tiles-magnet-set?srsltid=AfmBOoqg7dfFPNfaajUcE1w5FbJ8nAOQe9M2YgiXvuLIO7a7DEp797Zn

[mwichary@mastodon.online]

@valentine That’s cute!

[aschmitz@ostatus.lardbucket.org]

@mwichary Then again, Claude seems to generate it sometimes, so maybe it's just that I'm in Chicagoland and seeing it a lot from that but it's not actually Chicago-specific.

[se_davidobrien@mastodon.scot]

Well, yes. One of the #GDS mantras was not to research the hell out of stuff you already know.

And we *know* Transport is very legible. There’s 60 or 70 years of research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface)

@pete @mwichary

[llimllib@hachyderm.io]

@mwichary Maine town line signs have a distinctive font. My friend catalogued an example of each letter, had a font designer generate a font, and made some of his own.

Unfortunately his site doesn't seem to be up any longer, so I'd have to contact him personally to get the font, can do if it's super interesting to you. He runs a farm now instead of programming

[llimllib@hachyderm.io]

@mwichary Massachusetts also has a distinctive town line sign, but I know less about it

[jvl@mathstodon.xyz]

@mwichary Recently, I was intrigued by the font on the Uruguay 2026 World Cup jerseys. It seems it may be inspired by a sign on the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo [1,2,3].

[1] https://x.com/UruguayFootENG/status/2036422367522562322?lang=en
[2] https://outsidewrite.substack.com/p/iconic-football-stadiums-estadio
[3] https://www.threads.com/@footyfont/post/DWcM0e3DFe2/new-update-uruguay-font-world-cup-home-kit-link-product

[mwichary@mastodon.online]

10.
A pixel font from the NYC Times Square news ticker, 1990s–2000s. (It’s possible this was more of a generic font used elsewhere, but I think it came to be associated with this specific place, time, and purpose.)

[ricci@discuss.systems]

@mwichary A few examples, that are fairly close to me, I can probably get photos within a week or so if that'd be helpful:

Sign of the White Horse bar: https://www.whitehorseslc.com/

Murals by artist Trent Call: https://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/trent-calls-utah-acme-co-mural-540-n-600-west/, https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/12/395174/5765813/IMG_2535_o.jpg

A few references should you ever feel like going down the rabbit hole of a 19th century attempt to redesign English orthography:

https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/designing-deseret/page/home

https://www.slugmag.com/arts/art/interviews-features/the-lost-and-found-utah-alphabet/

https://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/bob-moss-and-the-strange-alphabet-of-utah-pop/

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p089428

[finitebaffle@mas.to]

@mwichary that Gill fella was all sorts of crazy horrible though oof

[dhd6@jasette.facil.services]

@mwichary Montréal house numbers in a characteristic font in white on blue tiles, apparently nobody has any record of who originally designed or manufactured them: https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/memoiresdesmontrealais/les-plaques-dadresse-montrealaises
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/videos/1-7358057/eclectisme-numeros-porte-montrealais