New York Subway Font Download

The Monospaced font stays very true to the original tiles with each letter form taking up the same horizontal and vertical space. Also included are directional arrows and superscript ordinals which allow you to replicate most any of the black tile signage of the Vickers era.

The Medium font is a slight variation designed for legibility and balance. Some letterforms are made wider or narrower and rounded letterforms extend slighty above and below the cap height and baseline. While the original tiles had no punctuation, the Medium font includes basic punctuation designed to remain faithful to the hand crafted, yet mechanically precise nature of the IND tiles.

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Brandon Sugiyama is an Emmy award-winning, California born, and Brooklyn-based art director and motion graphic designer. Shortly after moving to New York in 2011, he fell in love with the subway tile lettering of his local C line.

The NYC Subway Typeface began as a personal project to bring to life a historic piece of New York city daily life. These fonts and designs are an opportunity to share his love of New York with the community and all who visit the greatest city in the world.

Toronto Subway[1][2] is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed for the original section of the Toronto Transit Commission's Yonge subway. It is today used at station entrances, fare booths and track level signage throughout the system.[3]

The font was recreated by David Vereschagin in 2004. Because the original designer of the font is unknown, and no documentation of the font had been kept, Vereschagin digitized the font by visiting stations and making rubbings of the letters on the original Vitrolite glass tiles as well as taking photographs.[2] This is now used by the TTC as their font for station names.[2] Vereschagin designed a matching lowercase, inspired by Futura and other similar designs. As one of the few typeface designs to have originated in Canada, it was used in a number of zines as a mark of local pride.[6]

Often misidentified as Gill Sans[by whom?], the Toronto Subway font is based on Futura. Somewhat similar typefaces include Johnston (used by Transport for London), Verlag, Bernhard Gothic, Metro, Brandon Grotesque, Neutraface, and Eagle.

One of my off-and-on hyperfixations for a while has been the architecture and mosaics of NYC subway stations. Ever since I was a kid, I liked looking at the wall mosaics on the subway platforms as I whizzed by on the train, and while I have to give credit to the rapid transit systems in most of the rest of the world for being substantially more modern in almost every way, I'm frequently disappointed to find that few of them have the architectural flair that the NYC subway stations do.

I've found a few good ones based on various subway font stylings. Brandon Sugiyama's font at NYCSubwayFont.com is really good, as are Subway Mosaic and LaFarge. But it's those sans serif ones where I'm having a hard time finding good imitations. Washington Heights JNL is solid but a bit off, same with Name Sans. This Behance post by Studio BBG has a really good take on the Vickers sans serif IND station font, but as far as I know, it's not available for purchase or download (unless I'm wrong).

I've found nothing good on the sans serif font you can find in stations like the old South Ferry loop and Borough Hall, as well as Times Square at one point. Are there any good ones I've missed? Does that Studio BBG font have a download or purchase link?

Started by Hannes von Dhren as a young graphic designer with a passion for letters, HvD evolved to an established type foundry working together with clients, agencies and experts. Using the act of creation itself, as our driving force, we have produced a balanced array of playful and professional typefaces, always underpinned by expert execution, including FF Mark, Pluto, Reklame Script or Brandon Grotesque. One principle of HvD is that we want to deliver fonts of the highest quality level: optically AND technically.

In addition to creating self initiated typefaces, we worked on several bespoke type design projects for clients like Lufthansa, Volkswagen, Hyundai or Wal-Mart. Important or not, but good to mention: We received several design awards for our typefaces including the iF Award, the Red Dot Award or the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors Club NY.

One of the reasons for the long post is that Vignelli, despite his long love affair with Helvetica, did not choose it for the subway system signage. The decision to switch to Helvetica was done by others, long after he had any role in the design.

City officials never considered wooden cars safe for subway tunnel operation and removed them from underground service after a 1918 accident involving wooden cars at Malbone Street, Brooklyn, killed 93 passengers. But more than 2000 open-platform elevated cars, such as 1612C (originally BRT car 1417), remained in use on elevated lines, which could not support the weight of new all-steel subway cars. In 1938 Car 1417 was rebuilt (and renumbered 1612C) to run with 1612A and 1612B; cars A and C were motorized, while car B was a trailer. Under the Dual Contracts, the IRT and BRT jointly operated new elevated sections, such as the Astoria (R) and Flushing (7) lines.

Innovations in the subway system after World War II, including R-15 cars, continued even as increasing numbers of city residents moved to the suburbs and used automobiles for commuting. The R-15 order was small but significant. Although only 100 cars were produced, they combined the best features of other post-war orders with new and experimental features. The cars contained the propulsion and braking system of R-10 cars with design features of the R-11. The cars arrived painted a distinctive maroon with beige stripes. Porthole window design was adapted from earlier R-11cars.

This R-15 car, number 6239, is notable as the first car in the New York City subway system to be air-conditioned. The air-conditioning was installed 5 years after the car was put into service, but it failed after only 2 weeks of operation in the dusty subway environment. The cars were often damp, and water dripped on passengers. The costly and ineffectual air-conditioning was removed, but the New York City Transit Authority continued to work on the technology.

Recently learned something that explains a lot of the signage irregularities I'd noticed in the system. We know that the MTA began to use Akzidenz-Grotesk (Standard) in about 1967-1968 as Bob Noorda and Massimo Vignelli redesigned the system's signage. Vignelli really wanted to use Helvetica, but that wasn't readily available, so they settled on Standard--which I personally find a more attractive font. The Standard which they used was often hand-lettered and irregular, but it was Standard nonetheless. Their signs switched from black on white to white on black around 1972-1973, but the font hung on. By the early 1980s, however, Helvetica was used for certain letters like Q and J for legibility purposes, and by the mid-1980s, Helvetica began the official system font. This was codified around 1987, and since then it's all the MTA has used--albeit with some irregularities in weight, spacing, etc. This is all put much better in Paul Shaw's books and essays on the subject.

But in between the switch to Helvetica from Standard, the MTA apparently used a handcut form of Helvetica that was meant to emulate Standard. Instead of using the real thing, the MTA sign shop copped off the edges of the "c," "s," and "e" letters to make the font appear the same. They did nothing for the upper-case R and some other dissimilar letters, which led to some odd-looking signs. The effect of the chopped-off letters is also curious, as it gives a certain flourish to the "s"s and makes the "e"s oddly short and narrow. Not to mention, the angle of the slicing was pretty irregular--some "s" letters were a near 45 angle, while others were much more mild. I had never put together what the cause of this was, but I finally understand this was a purposeful choice. Some photos illustrate this:

Here's a mess of a sign on the line at Bushwick-Aberdeen. There are actually a ton of line signs like this, as they all must have been replaced around the same time in the 1980s with the sign shop's bizarre font. This is actually pretty easy to date: the was changed to the in 1985, and Helvetica was codified by 1988. These signs date from 1986-1987. Here we have Helvetica with the c/s/e letters all cut, but the standard R. Not to mention, the angles of the cuts are all different, so instead of a shared angle for the s/e, each is at its own angle:

There's an easy answer for these anomalies. Until 1987 or 1988 when Michael Hertz, the creator of the Diamond Jubilee map, took the reins of sign creation and approval from Bergen Street Sign Shop. Before then, they had complete control of what the signs looked like to how the font was emulated on said signs, much to the dissatisfaction and annoyance of both Unimark International and Michael Hertz Associates. One of the main problems is that between 1980 when the update to the Graphics Manual called for the Helvetica-zation of the letter "J" to the late '80s when Helvetica became the official font, there was too much ambiguity as to which font was to be used.

The middle distance, though, is not empty. A subway station is full of interesting things to look at. Mosaics. Bare-bulb light sockets next to, and superseded by, far more powerful fluorescence. Lively advertising, flanked by lousy advertising. Here and there, a cockroach or a rodent. And, of course, signs. Each of them contains relatively few words, sometimes just one or two, and they are not only placed in the middle distance; they are deliberately hung where you are supposed to see them. Bored eyes, accustomed to stimulation, tend to settle on even just a few letters.

The New York City subway system is not only an intricate web of tunnels and tracks but also a visual feast for typography enthusiasts. Its distinctive signs, maps, and logos have been guiding millions of commuters and tourists alike for decades. So, what exactly is the NYC subway font used? 17dc91bb1f