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Old May 2nd 09, 10:27 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Richard J.[_3_] Richard J.[_3_] is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Mar 2009
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Default New Johnston typeface changes

wrote on 02 May 2009 13:27:51 ...
Long after the new "1" in New Johnston had become widespread in bus
blinds and elsewhere, route "11" Routemaster blinds retained the
original figure "1", i.e. without the serif, which was most noticeable
when the buses were route-branded with "11" in New Johnston on each
side of the blind box, but the blind itself continued to contain the
old lettering.


The bus blinds have always been a law unto themselves. Although
Johnston created a condensed form (upper-case only) of his Underground
typeface for use on bus blinds, it was not consistently adopted, and the
typeface was redesigned in the 1960s when lower case started to be used
for intermediate destinations. As far as I know, the blinds have never
been converted to New Johnston, certainly not the route numbers.

I always thought that the serif on the "1" in New Johnston was an
aberration on what is meant to be a sans serif font, and am delighted
to see the return of the old elegant "1", and the more logical and
attractive "4" as well.


As I said in my original post, I don't regard it as merely a serif. It
nearly always slopes down to the left, reflecting the way in which the
figure 1 is written by millions of people. Look at the sanserif fonts
on your PC and see how many have the extra stroke on the 1. I suspect
it will be all except for Johnston (if you have the P22 or ITC versions)
and Gill Sans which was influenced by Johnston. Oh, and UKNumberPlate
too! All the rest - Arial, Tahoma, Verdana etc - and many others that
you see every day but may not have on your PC - Helvetica, Univers,
Frutiger, Bliss, Transport - all have the second stroke on the "1".

I'm not disagreeing with you on the attractiveness front, though.

--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)