Clearview (typeface)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Typeface | Clearview |
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| Category | Sans-serif |
| Designer(s) | Martin Pietrucha Philip Garvey Donald Meeker Christopher O'Hara James Montalbano |
| Foundry | various |
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Clearview is the name of a humanist sans-serif typeface family for guide signs on roads. It was developed by independent researchers with the help of the Texas Transportation Institute and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, under the supervision of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
The standard FHWA typefaces, developed in the 1940s, were designed to work with a system of highway signs in which almost all words are capitalized. The designers of Clearview sought to create a typeface adapted for mixed-case signage, initially expecting it would be based on an existing European sans serif typeface.[1] Instead, using a similar weight to the FHWA fonts, a new font was created from scratch. Two key differences are much larger counter spaces, the enclosed spaces in letters like the lower case "e" or "a," and a higher x-height, the relative height of the lower case "x" to the upper case "X." Smaller counter spaces in the FHWA fonts reduced legibility, particularly when the letters glowed from headlight illumination at night.
Clearview was granted interim approval for use on American road signs on 2 September 2004[2] and is expected to gradually replace the FHWA typefaces over the next few decades.[3]
In addition to its appearance on road signage, the typeface was adopted by AT&T for corporate use, including advertising, beginning in 2006.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Meeker and Associates / Terminal Design, Inc. ClearviewHWY Research & Design Development. Retrieved on 15 April 2007.
- ^ Federal Highway Administration. Interim Approval for Use of Clearview Font for Positive Contrast Legends on Guide Signs. 2 September 2004. Retrieved on 8 May 2006.
- ^ a b Yaffa, Joshua. "The Road to Clarity". New York Times Magazine, via nytimes.com, 12 August 2007. Retrieved on 11 August 2007.
[edit] External links
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