All posts tagged: typography

Happy Birthday, Johnston and the London Underground

January 18, 2013
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Via typeworship: This week London sees the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. To commemorate the occasion a stream locomotive used in the 19th century made a journey through the modern tunnels of the Metropolitan line. See more on the BBC It is also 100 years since its iconic typeface Johnston Sans was released as the the ‘Underground’ typeface. Dan Rhatigan, type director at Monotype and forthcoming interviewee of 8 Faces talks about Edward Johnston and the typeface here.   The structured, based on a calligraphic nib held […]

Fantasy Map: FF Yoga and FF Yoga Sans Font Sample (2009)

September 30, 2012
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Fantasy Maps
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Designed to showcase two new typeface families from the FontFont foundry, this “Metro map” looks quite spectacular at first glance, with some lovely colour combinations and design details. It’s only on closer inspection that you realise that it’s actually a superb piece of nonsense – nothing really makes any sense at all. Most type – apart from the few major “stations” – is way too small to be useful, and the circled line designations are […]

Reader Question: Adjusting the x-Height of a Typeface

May 19, 2012
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Reader Question: Help. I’m designing a tube map using Illustrator. I would like the x-height of the font I have chosen to be the same as the thickness of the tube lines. But Illustrator only seems to allow me to adjust the total height of any font, not the x height – so I can’t get a perfect match. Do you have any idea if this is possible? I Couldn’t find any information about it […]

Official Map: Glasgow Subway (Before and After)

February 10, 2012
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It’s always fun to do a comparison between old and new maps, and we have a great opportunity with this very recent rebranding of the Glasgow Subway (the third-oldest subway system in the world at 115 years of age, after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro). A deceptively simple system, the Subway consists of a single loop with 15 stations — trains run clockwise on the Outer Circle, and anti-clockwise on the Inner Circle. […]

Tutorial: How To Design a Transit Diagram

August 30, 2011
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One thing I often get asked regarding my transit diagrams is how I go about actually creating them. Originally, I just jumped right in and pushed things around on a page in Illustrator until it looked okay. These days, I’m far more organised, meticulous and precise with my work and I think it shows in the quality of my diagrams. Here’s a few tips and tricks that I live by when working on them: Plan […]