I was hoping for your help with something.
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@mwichary
The street name font for the sidewalk tiles in New Orleans.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/street-name-tiles-of-new-orleans@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
Famous enough to where a local company makes refrigerator alphabet tile sets.
https://dirtycoast.com/products/new-orleans-street-tiles-magnet-set?srsltid=AfmBOoqg7dfFPNfaajUcE1w5FbJ8nAOQe9M2YgiXvuLIO7a7DEp797Zn@valentine That’s cute!
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@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.)
@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.
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@se_davidobrien @mwichary Transport is also used on https://www.gov.uk/ and one of the reasons that site is so good (not always in terms of content, of course).
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.
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@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
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@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
@mwichary Massachusetts also has a distinctive town line sign, but I know less about it
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@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 -
9.
I linked to this a while back – more quirky enamel house numbers in the Netherlands.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 Thanks! You don’t happen to have a photo or a hint on how to find one?
@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/
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7.
East Germany used a particular version of Gill Sans. I love these signs. Very hard to find photos these days.@mwichary that Gill fella was all sorts of crazy horrible though oof
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@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 -
@slink Yes, thanks! Me too.
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@mwichary Massachusetts also has a distinctive town line sign, but I know less about it
@llimllib Thanks!
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@mwichary This is such a fun question! Typography can be surprisingly local—sometimes a font is so deeply tied to road signs, public transport, or government infrastructure that people recognize it instantly without ever knowing its name. I’m curious to see what everyone comes up with!
رد -
8.
Modern Germany has a specific license plate font that's designed to be hard to mess with. It is also used to mark parking spots.@mwichary A fun question.
Have you come across DIN 1451? It's used for street signs and such in Germany, and was FE-Schrift's predecessor on license plates before the year 2000. I keep a copy of it on my PC in case I need to design something that'll look like an official sign to Germans.
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@mwichary The actual font may not be typographically interesting, but I immediately thought of New Orleans (where I grew up) and the tiles they embed in the sidewalk at corners to mark street names: https://64parishes.org/new-orleans-street-tiles
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@mwichary Not sure how much non-designers notice this, but I've always liked how road signage for US national parks was set in Clarendon—Craw Clarendon, I think—not Highway Gothic/Clearview. I'm not aware of any other area that has its own road signage typeface; I'd know these were USNPS signs anywhere. I'll always associate that typeface with camping trips as a kid.
(More recently, they've been switching over to NPS Rawlinson Roadway, since it's more compact.)
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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.)@mwichary The last 30 or so seconds of this film from 1945 has footage of the ticker from around '44. Dunno why it's been stuck in my head for the past 20 years but
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I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
-
I was hoping for your help with something.
Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Something on road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that? I’ll share some examples in the thread.
I’d love to learn more about these. I’m not afraid of links in languages I don’t understand, ha.
(Also please repost for reach if you are willing!)
Thank you!
@mwichary The Cló Gaelach font used on street signs in Ireland (also stamps, many publications in Irish)
https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2025/0331/1504912-dublin-historic-street-signs/
familiar to anyone Irish. Bilingual street signs are uncontroversial in Britain (Welsh in Wales, Scots Gaelic in Scotland, Chinese in parts of London eg) and Ireland but any public signs featuring the Irish language provoke tantrums in parts of Northern Ireland where British loyalists feel threatened by Irish culture.
