Johnston (typeface)

Edward Johnston's 1916 alphabet for the Underground is where modern transit lettering starts. Frank Pick, the Underground Group's commercial manager, commissioned it in 1913 to help unify the company's look, and although it was meant for print, it quickly moved onto the enamel station signs. That is the lesson worth stealing: one typeface, used everywhere, so the poster at the entrance and the sign on the platform read as one system. Its open, humanist shapes also fed straight into Gill Sans, drawn by Johnston's former pupil Eric Gill. Today's version is Johnston100, made by Monotype for Transport for London for the face's centennial in 2016, after Eiichi Kono's 1979 New Johnston redraw.