Tratex / Frutiger

Tratex font 

The font used in Sweden and Finland is Tratex, which was designed by Karl-Gustav Gustafson in order to provide maximum legibility. 
Another important font used in Europe is Frutiger which is used in Switzerland. The initial font design by Adrian Frutiger was made for the signaling of the Charles De Gaulle airport in France.

Frutiger font

Charles De Gaulle airport signage

DIN 1451

In Germany the font used since 1930 is DIN 1451, an acronym for Deutsches Institut fuer Normung. It was published by the D Stempel AG foundry and it's based on IV 44, a font used by the Prussian railroad Company since 1906. The only changes made to the IV 44 were the 't', '6' and '9' glyphs. DIN is also widely used in signaling in other countries such as United Arab Emirates.

European fonts

In England, until 1933, there weren't any standard typefaces and every manufacturer would choose from a variety of a variety of san serif alphabets at will. In 1933 and following the Mayburu report, the Liewelyn-Smith Alphabet (a capitals only typeface) was adopted for use on the British roads. During the first motorway construction in 1950, signaling legibility came to the foreground and a new font was required. In 1957, Jock Kinnier and Margaret Calvet started designing a new font to be specifically used on British motorways. 

Transport Medium

After 6 long years of research,
testing and development, the
'Transport' font was finally used,
covering the entire road network in 1963. 

Transport Heavy

Special emphasis was given to the font's legibility, in which the 'a', 't', 'l' characters were given distinctive tails, while fractions became bar-less. The only exception in England's road network is the numbering of the motorways, in which another font is used, the motorway typeface. Transport, besides england, is widely used in other countries as well, such as Hong Kong, Ireland (with a little relation on 'a' and 'i'), Greece, Italy, Spain etc.

 (Post signage and use of typography - The new FWHA font / Angelopoulos Paschalis)

Choosing a Typeface

The beginning of the design process is the time to explore type families and select the appropriate typeface to suit a specific site and context. It is difficult to imagine today that in the 1960s and '70s a single typeface, Helvetica, was used almost exclusively for most sign systems. Classically trained graphic designers otherwise relied on a vocabulary of about a dozen "acceptable" typefaces. Evolving tastes, the broadening of cultural and social perspectives, and personal computers loaded with digital type soon changed everything. With type fonts now numbering in thousands, the wayfinding designers has to develop an even more discerning eye to balance issues of form versus function.

  Typefaces have specific personalities and suggest certain associations: Bembo seems traditional, Meta appears crisp and modern, Ziggurat is playful. When selecting a typeface, the designer must consider how it will be used: Will it appear on a carved inscription, as dimensional letters, on an illuminated board, or on a map? Will it guide drivers on a highway, students through a university, or diners to a restaurant? The experienced designer instinctively understands the typographic requirements of a project and selects a font that is both appropriate and communicative.

"The wayfinding handbook" page 77 / David Gibson

A proposition made by Eric Spiekermann and Kostas Petridis about the evolution of Greek scripture

In order to avoid obstacles and misunderstandings about the way of reading and understanding Greek Spiekermann and Petridis suggest:
the Greek vocal alphabet must contain 20 letters (α, β, γ, δ, ε, δ, ζ, θ, ι, κ, λ, μ, ν, ο, π, ρ, s, τ, υ, φ, x). 


So there will take place replacements such as 
ου -> υ 
ξ -> κs
ψ -> πs
η, ι, οι, ει -> ι
ω, ο -> ο
ε, αι -> ε
Stop using the letter ξ which is quite difficult, replace the letter ζ in z which is being used in latin typefaces but also in several greek ones in order to minimize it's difficulty. Only one typographic symbol for s and remove the descendings of x.
They also suggest the elimination of double consonants because they have already stopped being pronounced as double.
However a problem remains about the vagueness in pronunciation of "ντ", "γκ", ("γγ"), "μπ".
Using the existing pronunciation system it is not clear if we should pronounce them like "d", "g", "b" or "nd", "ng", "mb" and this vagueness will be continued because of important changes that are taking place.The disappearance of the pronouncement of the mb, nd, ng, is a trend nowadays
mostly in northern Greece but also in the southern.


Here is a visual example.
 

Two different people ordered these two signs, the first one pronounces the word "Λαγκαδάς" like "Langadas" and the second one like "Lagadas". There is also a third version in which every letter is translated from Greek to the latin alphabet and so we have "Lagkadas".


In conclusion, the only thing that they achieved is confusing the drivers rather than informing them.
(+design magazine/page 23/issue 24/October 2007)

To begin with...

Everything that is being perceived by human sight and contains one letter or a thousand words constitutes our daily visual "food", reflects our culture and shows our knowledge level and urban sensitivity. Aesthetics is not a combination of personal tastes. The ethical manners formed by tradition, historical knowledge and documentation is the requirement in order to compose functional typographical "speech".