About the Designer
Edward Johnston – born 11. 2. 1872 in San José, Uruguay, died 26. 11. 1944 in Ditchling, England – type designer, calligrapher, author, teacher. Studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh.
1898: obtains his Ph.
D. Moves to London. Studies ancient writing techniques in the British Museum. 1899–1913: teaches at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in the new lettering de
partment. 1901–40: teaches at the Royal College of Art in London. 1906: his book "Writing and Illuminating and Lettering" is published, causing something of a "renaissance" for calligraphy. It is considered the most influential book on calligraphy ever written. 1910–30: designs fonts for Count Harry Kessler’s Cranach-Presse in Weimar. 1912: moves to Ditchling. 1913: founder member and editor of "The Imprint" magazine, of which there are a total of nine issues. 1915: Frank Pick, the director of London Transport, commiss
ions Johnston to design a typeface for the Londong Underground’s corporate identity.
1916: Johnston produces a typeface for the Underground. Eric Gill works on the project with him. Johnston works with London Transport until 1940. 1979: Johnston’s London Transport type is reworked by Colin Banks to produce New Johnston. 1928: an edition of "Hamlet" is published with Johnston’s Hamlet-Type and wo
odcuts by Edward Gordon Craig. 1930: designs a Greed alphabet for Count Harry Kessler’s Cranach-Presse in Weimar, yet only a f
ew of the letters are cast.
Johnston (or Johnston Sans) is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. It is well-known for its use by Transport for London.
Johnston's former student Eric Gill also worked on the development of the typeface,which was later to influence his own Gill Sans typeface, produced 1928–32.
The font family was originally called Underground. It became known as Johnston's Railway Type, and later simply Johnston. It comes with two weights, heavy and ordinary. Heavy does not contain lower-case letters.A further change occurred in 2008 when Transport for London removed the serif from the numeral '1' and also altered the '4', in both cases reverting these to their original appearanceLondon Transport Museum licensed Edward Johnston's design to P22 Type Foundry, which was released as Underground Pro (or P22 Underground Pro) family. The full Underground Pro Set contains nineteen Pro OpenType fonts and 58 Basic OpenType fonts, covering extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic character set
s. Weights are expanded to s
ix: Thin, Light, Book, Medium, Demi, Heavy. However, there are no italic styles in P22's designs. Underground, Underground CY, Underground GR support extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek characters respectively. The Latin sub-family contains medium weight Titling fonts, which feature underscored and/or overscored Latin small letters. Pro fonts include extensive OpenType features, including eleven stylistic sets: Petite Capitals, Dryad Cap Alternates, Humanistic Alternates 1, Humanistic Alternates 2, Geometric Alternates, Round Points, Diamond Points, Alternate Tilde, All Under commas, All cedillas, Alternate Eng.
.
Features of the font are the perfect circle of the letter O and the use of a diagonal square dot above minuscule letters i and j and for the full stop. Commas, apostrophes and other punctuation marks are also based on the diagonal square dot. The capitals of the typeface are based on Roman square capitals, and the lower-case on the humanistic m
inuscule, the handwriting in use in Italy in the fifteenth century. In this, it marked a break with the kinds of sans serif previously used, sometimes known as grotesque, which tended to have squarer shapes.
The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, Commercial Manager of the London Electric Railway Company (also known as 'The Underground Group'), as part of his plan to strengthen the com
pany's corporate identity, and introduced in 1916. In 1933, The Underground Group was absorbed by the London Passenger Transport Board and the typeface was adopted as part of the London Transport brand.
New Johnston The Johnston typeface was redesigned in 1979 by Eiichi Kono at Banks & Miles to produce New Johnston, the variant of the original typeface currently used by London Underground. The new typeface is slightly heavier or bolder than the original. The new family comes with Bold, Medium, Light weights. The new typeface replaced the old typeface.
The original font was developed in the 1920s by Percy Delf Smith (another former pupil of Edward Johnston). It was commissioned b
y Frank Pick of London Underground as a 'petit-serif' variation of the organisation's standard sans-serif Johnston face. The typeface was originally used for the headquarters building at 55 Broadway, SW1.
It can still be seen on some signs at Sudbury Town and Arnos Grove on the Piccadilly line.
In early 2007, an electronic version of the typeface was developed under the name Johnston Delf Smith, specifically for use on historic signs
London Transport Museum licensed Edward Johnston's design to P22 Type Foundry, which was released as Underground Pro (or P22 Underground Pro) family. The full Underground Pro Set contains nineteen Pro OpenType fonts and 58 Basic OpenType fonts, covering extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic character sets. Weights are expanded to six: Thin, Light, Book, Medium, Demi, Heavy. However, there are no italic styles in P22's designs. Underground, Underground CY, Underground GR support extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek characters respectively. The Latin sub-family contains medium weight Titling fonts, which feature underscored and/or overscored Latin small letters. Pro fonts include extensive OpenType features, including eleven stylistic sets: Petite Capitals, Dryad Cap Alternates, Humanistic Alternates 1, Humanistic Alternates 2, Geometric Alternates, Round Points, Diamond Points, Alternate Tilde, All Under commas, All cedillas, Alternate Eng.
Really well done for the blog.these are so sweet and pretty!
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