| Date: 1916
Designer:
Edward Johnston
Foundry:
London Underground / Stephenson, Blake
Location:
London and Sheffield, England
Current equivalent:
P22 London Underground
See also:
ITC Johnston Sans by Dave Farey, Agenda by Greg Thompson, Ministry by Rian Hughes, Bliss by Jeremy Tankard
Technologies:
Wood
Metal (foundry)
Photosetting
Postscript
Opentype |
| Famous for:
First corporate signage typeface for a metropolitan transport system. Applications: Prestige and Private Press
Ubiquity:
Not widely used
Category:
Sans Serif Humanist
Stress: Vertical
Serifs: Sans | | Design history:
A definitive humanist sans serif, Johnston's lettering was designed for signage rather than printing, which shows in the weight and the spacing of this type. Protected by law and unavailable to the general trade for many years, the type was redrawn and digitised as New Johnston – a related range of four weights with matching italics for London Underground in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Richard Kegler of P22 foundry negotiated with the London Transport Museum to produce a more faithful digital replica of the original type, now on sale in the museum and at the P22 website. It has two weights – the regular upper and lowercase and bold titling capitals, and a set of ornaments in the period style.
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