A Clearview of the Highway
Tuesday August 14, 2007
Here's an interesting read from The New York Times on the development and evolution of the Clearview typeface: The Road to Clarity by Joshua Yaffa.
Clearview is the replacement for Highway Gothic used on US highways for decades. I first mentioned Clearview (Clearview as New Highway Sign Font) here on this site back in November 2004. Although roadsigns are only just now starting to change here and there -- and a complete replacement across America's highway system may take many, many more years yet, the changes actually began back in the 90s.
In his article, Yaffa delves into much more than just Highway Gothic versus Clearview. Through research and interviews he discusses how highway signage becomes a part of our culture and such issues as nightime halation blur (read the article if you don't know what that is), ALL CAPS versus mixed case, brand-recognition, x-height, and legibility, and how Clearview made its biggest debut, not on the highway, but as the new font of AT&T. Good stuff.
Comments
I’m sorry, but I’m finding something terribly annoying about the way this ‘About’ article was put together. In the first place, I tried to get the Bubble article listed ahead of it, and the link took me to the Highway Type Face article instead. But it didn’t even give me THAT, actually… instead it gave me another link to it. With a browser that doesn’t work all that fast, some of the time, I really get tired of the runaround, and I am not likely to try it again.
Sorry for your trouble IRV. The “article” you referred to was the weekly newsletter. I mistyped a link. Sorry, it happens. The link you were looking for actually did appear on the same page with the Clearview Article blog entry but I’ve sent out the correct link in this week’s newsletter as well.