The privatisation of British Rail from 1994 accelerated the decline in use of the typeface on the railway network with most of the privatised train operating companies who now manage individual stations choosing to use the typefaces associated with their own corporate identities for station signs and publicity. More recently, the custom Brunel typeface introduced by Railtrack for signs at major stations and adapted by Network Rail as NR Brunel was recommended as a new national standard for station signs by a 2009 report commissioned by the Secretary of State for Transport,[9] and was used extensively by South West Trains and East Midlands Trains. Meanwhile, Helvetica Medium has replaced Rail Alphabet as the industry's preferred typeface for safety notices within passenger trains due to the ready availability of the former and for consistency with British Standards on general safety signs.[10]
Some train operators continued use of Rail Alphabet long into the privatisation era. Arriva Trains Wales[11] used the typeface until the end of the franchise in 2018, with First Great Western also making extensive use of Rail Alphabet for signage until the firm's rebranding to Great Western Railway in 2015. Merseyrail[12] continues to use the typeface for station signage.
In May 2021, as part of the Williams Rail Review, it was announced that the new government body Great British Railways (GBR) will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 on the rail network, replacing the many different typefaces used on railway signage since privatisation.[2]
The exhibition tells the design story behind the railways from the 1960s to the launch of Rail Alphabet 2. You can also learn more about wayfinding as a design field and how new systems are designed to create a safer and more inclusive travel environment.
Explore the creative processes that led to the Rail Alphabet typeface and see how rail signage, printed materials and station architecture have changed for the present day. It includes a bespoke suite of pictograms for our new wayfinding system designed by design studio Spaceagency using the new Rail Alphabet 2 typeface.
The exhibition forms part of a wider initiative, led by our Buildings and Architecture team, to deliver a safe and reliable railway through good and sustainable design. This opportunity to work with experts in wayfinding and typeface design will allow us to reach the wider design community and broaden our approach to quality design.
It is evident from the white paper that the detail of how this new branding and signage approach will apply in Scotland and Wales (where the provision and presentation of passenger railway services are devolved matters) has yet to be fully resolved. And in London I think it would be a mistake to require the London Overground (part of the National Rail network after all) to ditch its Transport for London corporate identity. I expect implementation will take years to sort out and deliver. But Rail Alphabet 2 signage, in black text on white backgrounds, should bring a unified and consistent appearance to most English railway stations at the very least, restoring the sense of a national network after three decades.
There could be no better tribute to the skills of Margaret Calvert, Henrik Kubel, and Sarah Manning and her team at Spaceagency, as well as the passion for great railway design of Dewar and his team, than for this to be the case.
Chair of Network Rail Peter Hendy said the company, which is the owner and infrastructure manager of most of Great Britain's railway network, wanted a clean and consistent design to improve journeys and stations.
Kinneir Calvert signed the motorways and roads with their Transport alphabet (see Eye no. 34 vol. 9). Rail Alphabet was drawn to be read in a slower, pedestrian context: signs for NHS hospitals and airports and rail stations. The original Rail Alphabet was produced purely for signing, and later adopted by DSB, the Danish railway corporation, where it was used until 1997.
A lasting legacy
The work done by Kinneir and Calvert on Rail Alphabet was hailed as something of a triumph and was duly coveted by a number of other transport companies from as far afield as Japan. So successful was the typeface that it was subsequently adopted by a number of state railway companies, notably DSB in Denmark. Kinneir and Calvert were soon carrying out signage work for the Department of Health and Social Security (for the National Health Service) and the Minstry of Defence for the country's hospital and military signage systems respectively, where the typeface was again chosen for its many proven virtues of functionality.
Nowadays, one or two train operating companies doggedly retain Rail Alphabet in recognition of its outstanding suitability as a public wayfinding typeface. The Rail Safety and Standards Board still specify the font for a number of types of lineside signs. There is also a dwindling number of 'legacy' signs across the national railway network that will no doubt continue to disappear over the course of time as they are replaced with altogether blander and less effective alternatives.
A very special type design issue from Japan's IDEA magazine. This is a solid reader that cover type design history and practice, with an international slate of contributors. Twenty articles from past issues of IDEA are reproduced within, presenting perspectives on type design's evolution over the past quarter century (from the late 1980s when PostScript and Macintosh revolutionized type design, to digital fonts, new type foundries, historical studies, and the impact of the internet). An indispensable book for graphic designers, type aficionados, and type design students.
In that sense, there can be few people who have had as big an impact on how the UK looks than she has. Her fingerprint is on every street corner across the land, in every railway station, in the airports and hospitals. A miasma of design that flows unnoticed yet essential around our daily lives.
The various signs in the photograph read "BOOKS &STATIONERY" on the building above Fox's sign, "STAGEOFFICE" just to the right of Fox's sign, and "ORMSBYHOUSE" on the front and side of their three-story building. Fox'ssign reads "BOOKS, STATIONERY & NEWSPAPERS" in ribbonlettering, and "CIGARS, TOBACCO, FRUIT, &c [etc.]" below that.His canvas banner, partly unfurled, reads simply "J. G. FOX" andthe second line in the banner is not fully legible, but appears to read"DEALER IN." A barber's pole is barely visible, being thefourth pole to the right, beneath where a man or woman in an apron sits onthe railing above the sidewalk. The barber's name was J. J. Underwood,who advertised himself at that location in the Carson City directory (Kelly90). Other signage can be seen hanging over the sidewalk and stenciled on theshop windows, and an octagonal wall clock with Roman numerals can be seenhanging inside the window to the right of Fox's doorway, but its handsare not visible. Twain noted that those sidewalks were made of "boardsthat were more or less loose and inclined to rattle when walked upon"(RI 158).
Weed took a second photograph of the southwest corner of the plazaat Carson City early one morning, probably the same day he photographed thestagecoach depot. The shadows cast by the fence point west, indicating themornings hours. Twain had claimed that the plaza was unfenced when hearrived, and although his statements in Roughing It are couched in fiction,it is possible the fence was constructed in the months after his arrival andbefore Weed's visit (RI 158). To frame this second image, Weed had stoodnear the fence that bordered the western edge of the plaza, and aimed hiscamera south toward the Ormsby House. The Ormsby House is clearly visible, asare the Wells Fargo stagecoach depot and Fox's newsstand, although theglare of the morning sun obliterates the lettering on Fox's signs.Weed's image nicely captures the row of buildings bordering the southernend of the plaza, and just one block east beyond the left border ofWeed's image were the offices of The Silver Age near the southeastcorner of the plaza. The same heavy timbers used in local mine shafts wereused in the rail fence that enclosed the plaza, and the streets are crowdedwith freight wagons going about their daily rounds, hauling equipment andsupplies. Twain had described Carson City as a town that covered four or fiveblocks in each direction, full of short wood-frame structures crammedside-by-side, with buildings more scattered apart farther from the plaza (RIch 21). His description is more or less consistent with what can be seen inthis photograph, which shows the roughly four acre plaza as Sam Clemensactually experienced it, although Mark Twain tended to embellish.
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