The third – and most diverse – category of sans serif typefaces is known as humanist sans. Compared to the grotesque and geometric categories, humanist sans typefaces almost calligraphic, with a natural variation in line weight and open characters that enhance legibility. With less “rules” to their construction, there’s a much greater variety of letter forms – meaning it’s easier to find a typeface that projects its own unique personality upon your map, which can be good to give that vital sense of “place” to your map and help it stand out from the crowd.

One of the most popular humanist sans serif fonts used in transit map design is Erik Spiekermann’s FF Meta – I’ve featured examples from Zurich, Vancouver, BC and Rio de Janeiro, which does some terrible things to a lovely typeface.

(You actually can’t go wrong with most of Spiekermann’s sans serif typefaces, as many of them were specifically designed for wayfinding or road signage.)

Frutiger – originally designed as a wayfinding typeface for Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport in 1968 – is also popular, and is used here by Auckland and Rotterdam.

Adobe’s Myriad Pro is also used quite a lot: it has a lot of weights and widths, so it’s very versatile. Hong Kong’s MTR uses it, and I’ve used it pretty extensively in my own maps.

As well as these commercially available fonts, many transit agencies use their own custom typefaces that are humanist sans serif. The London Underground’s Johnston Sans is probably the most famous of these, although I see it as a geometric/humanist hybrid, rather than a true humanist sans. Other custom humanist sans include the Paris Metro’s Parisine, and the similarly named Brusseline for Brussels’ Metro system.

Next: Other typefaces!