Question: Hi there! Thanks so much for your comments on my Berlin 1952 redesign. I’m working on a recreation of a Berlin map from 1992 (I can’t include links, but there’s a few from 1992, 1991, and 1988 floating around Google I believe), and I’m wondering what your advice on font is. I can’t really pick it out by eye and WhatTheFont hasn’t been too helpful. What would you say would be the closest one? FF Transit maybe? Thanks so much!

Answer: If you’re talking about the Erik Spiekermann-designed BVG diagram that first appeared c.1991, then it’s absolutely FF Transit – the typeface was created specifically for it!

Erik once very kindly sent me a full PDF of the 1993 Berlin diagram, and had a few interesting things to say about its development:

I enclose the diagram I designed for Berlin in 1991 (the version attached is from 93), shortly after the East- and West-Berlin got reunited. It keeps growing and changing, but in essence it’s still the same. It was drawn in Freehand 3.0 before there was a PDF format. Needed 23 layers for all the lines. Things got changed constantly as the two cities grew together and as names changed from Stalin- and Lenin-somethings to more acceptable ones.

The metadata in Erik’s PDF also confirms that the main typeface is Transit, so there you go – straight from the horse’s mouth!

See also: Jesse’s recreation of a 1952 Berlin map