Rail Alphabet

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Typeface	Rail Alphabet
Category	Humanist Sans-serif
Designer(s)	Jock Kinneir, Margaret Calvert
Foundry	BRB Residuary Limited (former British Railways Board)

Rail Alphabet is a typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for British Railways. First used by them in signing tests at London's Liverpool Street Station, it was then adopted by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as part of their 1965 rebranding of the company.^[1]

The rebranding was comprehensive and included a logo (the double arrow originated by DRU), a shortened name British Rail, station environments, train liveries, and promotional literature.

The typeface remains the dominant standard for trackside warning signs, and safety/operating notices within the trains themselves, but in the post-privatisation era, some of the train operating companies (TOCs) who manage individual stations on the British railway network have chosen to use their own fonts and typography for station signage, timetables and promotional literature, which has led to an inconsistency of design across the railway network.

Rail Alphabet is similar, but not identical, to a bold weight of Helvetica (and, not quite as similar, Akzidenz Grotesk or Arial). Akzidenz Grotesk had earlier also provided the same designers the broad inspiration for the Gatwick Airport signing (which later became the British Airports Authority (later known as BAA) standard) and Transport typeface used for all road signs in the United Kingdom.

Rail Alphabet was also adopted by the National Health Service and was used for signage within and around NHS buildings until the late 1990s. The main distinguishing feature of the NHS usage of the font is that it was commonly displayed against a coloured background - unlike on the railway where it is nearly always displayed black-on-white.

[edit] See also

• Transport Typeface - Another font designed by Kinneir & Calvert for use on UK road signs.
• Johnston Typeface - The typeface used by London Underground, designed by Edward Johnston.
• Public signage typefaces

[edit] References