Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Road to Clarity

Joshua Yaffa writes in the NYT Magazine this week:

The Federal Highway Administration granted Clearview interim approval in 2004, meaning that individual states are free to begin using it in all their road signs. More than 20 states have already adopted the typeface, replacing existing signs one by one as old ones wear out. Some places have been quicker to make the switch — much of Route I-80 in western Pennsylvania is marked by signs in Clearview, as are the roads around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — but it will very likely take decades for the rest of the country to finish the roadside makeover. It is a slow, almost imperceptible process. But eventually the entire country could be looking at Clearview.

Some comparisons between Highway Gothic Series E and Clearview are given here:

NYT slideshow accompanying the article
typographic.org
clearviewhwy.com

1 comment:

Ben said...

I was really glad to see this article. For a long time, I've thought that it was way too hard to tell the difference between an 'i' and an 'l' on U.S. highway signs. Since I'm in Scotland right now, I've been looking at a lot of signs that use British Transport; they have that little tail on the 'l' which I think helps a lot.

 
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