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The Typography of the United States’ Road Signs
a brief overview
I have always been interested in the practicality of typography and graphic design. The ability of a visual designer to intentionally direct the eyes of the viewer where he wants them to go is fascinating. In a similar vein, I feel drawn to the beauty of instructional design, rather than a more creative, artistic design approach. Road signs are purely practical, but they also are not halfway unattractive from a design standpoint. The ability of practical design mediums to be visually pleasing whilst communicating
efficiently is a challenge, and walking that line between functionality and attractive design is interesting to me.
The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), a manual for road signs and other traffic devices in the US, has evolved significantly since 1971. It has gone through several editions with important changes, such as introducing new signs, safety improvements, and transitioning to electronic formats. This manual dictates very specific rules for road sign design, evolving to suit contemporary needs. Updates in 2013 and 2023 focused on adapting to new technologies and changing travel habits. The manual continues to change to promote safe and efficient road use. Font selection for said road signs has had an interesting history, with standardization, continued pursuit of legibility, and efficient communication resulting in subtle changes over the years. It is currently
the states’ decision whether to use Highway Gothic or a specifically designed font called Clearview. Regardless of font selection, sansserif typefaces are used exclusively by governments worldwide, promoting all-around clear communication.
Sans serif typefaces were chosen for road signs because they are typically clean, open, and have
a large x-height, making them more legible from a distance. The design of road signs requires typefaces in which individual letterforms are easily differentiated. Sans-serif typefaces with a clean design and open counters are better suited for this purpose, especially when scale is increased. These factors, when intentionally applied to type design
with the specific purpose of road sign application, make glanceable reading easy. This attribute of road signage is highly important, as rapidly moving vehicles make high-speed information relay essential.
In the following pages, I will be conducting a typographic analysis, observing how selected typefaces function within the realm of highway road sign design. I will present found examples, scientific research, and subjective opinion with the goal of creating a attractive, cohesive publication.
1959 California Interstate signage
PREVIOUS PAGE: road signs pre-standardization in Oregon
RIGHT:
the history of US road signs
The history of road sign types in the United States is a fascinating journey that reflects the evolution of transportation and safety regulations. It all began in 1924 when the First National Conference on Street and Highway Safety proposed standardizing colors for traffic control devices. This led to the adoption of the color red to indicate STOP and green to signify proceed. Additionally, signs with black letters on a yellow background were used to advise caution. However, an unconventional combination of white letters on a purple
background to indicate an intersection did not last.
In 1935, the first edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) was published, which set the standard for the classification of signs as regulatory, warning, or guide signs. Regulatory signs were predominantly black on white rectangles, while the STOP sign was black on yellow or yellow on a red octagon. The use of symbols on signs was promoted due to the increasing presence of nighttime roadway illumination.
The MUTCD also responded to the need for standardization in the use and design of traffic control devices as the nation grew and changed. For instance, it mandated the standardization of sign sheeting materials and specified mounting heights and lateral clearances for signs.
Fast forward to more recent times, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has also
played a vital role in regulating road signs. According to the FDOT regulations, advance street name signs at signalized intersections are recommended as a safety countermeasure under certain conditions. These conditions include high volume approaches, high-speed rural roadways, and the presence of a documented history of side-swipe or rear-end crashes.
The history of road sign types in the United States is a story of innovation, standardization, and adaptation to the changing needs of transportation and safety. From the early proposals to standardize colors in 1924, to the publication of the first MUTCD in 1935, and the ongoing efforts by agencies like FDOT to enhance safety through advance street name signs, it’s clear that road sign types have continuously evolved to ensure the safety of road users and reflect the changing landscape of transportation.
TOP: One of the first STOP signs used in the US. Michigan, 1915
BOTTOM: Modern-day STOP sign in downtown Pensacola, FL
roadway signs in their environment
This image presents several road signs and how they relate to one another, as well as rules that govern layout on site. Overall, color and contrast within the use of type guides the viewer, relaying more urgent information first, and less important information afterwards. This establishment of hierarchy is key to the success of road sign design.
This harkens back to the need for information to be glanceble. In this instance, both color and contrast create an intuitive order of operations for consuming information. The bright orange paired with bold, black type creates tension that catches the eye almost immediately. As this is a temporary sign notifying road users of possible changes in traffic patterns, this makes sense here. The less intense contrast created by golden yellow and two weights of black lettering serves to communicate a less urgent warning. Lastly, the soft green background and bold, white letterforms simply serve to keep the road users on track, making it the least urgent.
The design of typefaces for road sign use is intensive. Fonts are engineered for maximum legibility from a distance, as well as readability in adverse weather conditions. Factors that effect legibility include stroke width, x-height, and the design
ABOVE: specifications for a “no passing zone” sign. Notice the use of contrast to comunicate urgency
OPPOSITE: image of road signs on Interstate in Pensacola
of crucial letters like a, e, and s. These letterforms are easily confused and must remain clear even under difficult viewing conditions such as fog, halation, and remain clear in both positive and negative contrast situations. Fonts are designed for maximum distinguishability, often featuring open counters and clean sans-serif forms. The stroke width
and x-height are carefully designed to ensure visibility, even under challenging lighting conditions. These pursuits have led to typefaces that are tailored specifically for road sign usage. These crucial considerations are detailed and tested through empirical legibility studies, with the goal of creating typefaces that improve upon existing ones.
Common traits throughout road signage include the grammatically correct capitalization of road names and locations, while other information is presented in all caps. The image on the opposite page is useful in identifying typographic elements that are consistent in this area of design. Observe how scale is used to differentiate between categories of information. Also see the capitalization of all text not related to regional information (“NORTH”, “WEST”, “MILE”, “EXITS”, etc.). It is also important to note the scale of the sign as a whole, evidenced by the construction worker on site.
ABOVE: no parking sign in Pensacola (set in Highway Gothic)
OPPOSITE: image of road signs put in perspective (set in Highway Gothic)
typefaces in use
The standardization of lettering for road signs has an interesting and surprisingly complicated history. Obviously, it is important for road signs to be standardized in their appearance for the sake of viewers across the country. Federal regulations over this signage allow for it to be easily recognizable, no matter the driver’s location in the United States. This ease of recognition also gives such signs a universal weight of authority anywhere in the States.
The process of nationwide standardization began in the 1940s when it
became clear that a variety of designs trying to communicate the same messages hurt brand recognition. In 1948, the FHWA published the first of these “standard alphabets” in its Standard Alphabets for Traffic Control Devices, using a variant of Century Gothic, titled Highway Gothic. The resulting standard alphabets were composed of six typefaces, B-F, which increased in letterspacing and line thickness at each step forward. The thickest and most legible typeface was Series F, while the thinnest and most condensed was Series B. Together, these typefaces allowed for standardized communication and presentation of roadway information for a number of years, but improvements were eventually necessary.
Highway Gothic performs just fine in on-site roadway signage. It is highly legible and readable making it possible to quickly glean information from the type, even at high speeds. This was a good selection for the standardization of national signage, and it has continued to perform even today. The great roadway sign typeface debacle, however, begins with the development and introduction of a new standard alphabet named Clearview.
ABOVE: US road sign set in Highway Gothic
The development of a new standard alphabet began in the 1990s with research into creating an alternative font. This resulted in the final design of the Clearview font letters in 2003. The goal of the Clearview font was to increase legibility and reduce irradiation or “halation” of highway sign legends. This font underwent multiple upgrades and was tested
extensively in both laboratory and test track research. The development process involved a team of traffic engineers, human factors research scientists, graphic designers, sign systems designers, and a digital type designer. The resulting digital fonts were refined to meet industry standards and ensure uniform use of type data across all software
TOP: Sample text set in FHWA Series E Modified
BOTTOM: Sample text set in Clearview 5-W
LEFT: Full Clearview Type System
applications for engineering, design, and manufacturing. The development process included extensive day and night observations by the design and research team, as well as research studies conducted by The Texas A&M University Transportation Institute and The Larson Transportation Institute at the Pennsylvania State University.
Clearview was given interim approval based on the early research findings that suggested an improvement in sign legibility. The FHWA issued the Interim Approval for the Use of Clearview Font for Positive Contrast Legends on Guide Signs (IA–5) in 2004. This approval was granted to State and local highway agencies to use the new font on an interim basis, as it had been demonstrated to be effective through testing and evaluation. A muchimproved aspect of Clearview was the increased legibility of letterforms when displayed in positive contrast.
The findings during the research were compelling enough for officials to approve its interim use with the expectation that more research would be conducted on Clearview’s efficacy in negative contrast situations. The intention was to allow the traveling public and operating agencies to realize the safety and operational benefits associated with the new font while continuing to gather research and data.
RIGHT: an image from the research phase of Clearview. FHWA Series E Modified is in the top left, while Clearview 5-W and 5-B are set on the bottom two rows
FHWA verus Clearview
Here’s a bit of a recap: the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approved the Highway Gothic type system in 1948, composed of six type families A, B, C, D, E, E Modified, and F, thinnest to thickest. This system reigned supreme for the next 56 years until a new standard alphabet, Clearview, was granted interim approval by the FHWA in 2004. This limited approval was given so that states could decide if they wanted to adopt Clearview and spend state funds on new signage while the type system continued to
undergo further research and development. For the next several years, some states began replacing old Highway Gothic signs with the shiny, new Clearview ones, while other states elected to maintain usage of Highway Gothic like nothing ever happened. During this time of interim approval, the FHWA granted 26 states approval to begin transitioning to Clearview. As research continued concerning Clearview’s efficacy on the roads, the FHWA began compiling and analyzing these findings and began to issue more specific guides for the type system’s intended use starting in 2008. As unclear usage instructions began to be disseminated nationwide, reported misapplications of Clearview became a growing concern for the FHWA. In 2011, the FHWA released a complete guide on how the approved Clearview series should be used in roadway signage. Although a
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TOP: Digital Rendering of roadway sign set in Clearview
BOTTOM: Digital rendering of roadway sign set in FHWA Series E (Modified)
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LEFT: Comparison of Clearview and equivalent FHWA Highway Gothic Series comprehensive instruction packet was available, many unapproved versions of Clearview remained accessible from the company, further confusing state administrations. In answer to widespread confusion, the FHWA stopped issuing interim approvals for the use of Clearview in 2014 and began to look more closely at whether or not the new type system should be allowed. The American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) released a letter of concern about the intermittent use of Clearview and the confusion it had caused in July 2015. The FHWA made its official decision known in January 2016, stating that interim approval of Clearview was rescinded. Highway Gothic, once again, had a stranglehold on the US roadway sign system.
“
Helen Keller can tell you from the grave that Clearview looks better.
- Donald Meeker
“
The news of the rejection of Clearview came as quite a shock to Donald Meeker. Donald was the head of Meeker and Associates Design, and one of the lead designers on the Clearview team. He is quoted in an article published by Bloomberg.com in 2016 as saying: “Helen Keller can tell you from the grave that Clearview looks better.”
TOP: An overlapping comparison of Clearview and Highway Gothic
OPPOSITE: Comparison of Clearview (top) and equivalent FHWA Highway Gothic Series (bottom).
Obviously discouraged at his decades-long project’s shutdown by the FHWA, Meeker continued to argue for Clearview’s superiority to the end. As ridiculous as this might sound, Meeker got another chance.
In March of 2018, the FHWA again made a dramatic decision, this time to reinstate interim approvals for the use of Clearview’s positive-contrast series. Upon further review of research, the FHWA concluded that Clearview did in fact have improved legibility and reduced halation in its positive-contrast
displays. An example of positive contrast would be the standard white letterforms against the green background of the highway sign (see above figure). The reduced line thickness and increased counter sizes of Clearview proved the typeface more effective in certain situations when compared to FHWA’s standard alphabets. For this reason, the FHWA decided to reinstate the use of Clearview on a temporary basis. As of today, Clearview is still allowed, but a request must be filed and arppoved by the FHWA prior to usage.
Many improper uses of Clearview are still being sorted and addressed to this day. As comprehensive guides on the usage of Clearview are available from the FHWA, improper usage is strictly enforced.
TOP: A side-by-side comparison of Clearview and Highway Gothic demonstrating positve and negative contrasts for each.
Here are some examples of misuse of Clearview on the roadways today. Issues of legibility, uniformity, and readability arose as a result of mixed weights and cases, misalignment, and improper spacing of text. It is also improper to use cleaarview in negative-contrast situations
of improper usage from FHWA website.
Images
type analysis: Clearview
In a 2017 scientific study published by the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, a team of researchers conducted an independent study on the legibility of Clearview and Highway Gothic. Their article, “Empirical Assessment of the Legibility of the Highway Gothic and Clearview Signage Fonts”
is aptly titled, as they go into great depth, analyzing what makes these fonts work. What they found is that, at the end of the day, Clearview improved upon FHWA’s Highway Gothic by providing superior legibility. The study utilized “legibility thresholds” which refer to the amount of time it takes to accurately read a single word with approximately 80% accuracy under glance-like reading conditions. It is measured in milliseconds and is used as a determinant of the legibility of text, with lower thresholds indicating better legibility. The threshold is established through a lexical decision task, where participants make a yes-or-no decision about whether a string of text presented briefly forms a common
English word or a pseudoword. The legibility threshold is determined based on the display time required to achieve the target accuracy level, with typefaces having better legibility exhibiting lower threshold display times. This study indicated that Clearview had lower legibility thresholds than Highway Gothic across all conditions, with thresholds lowest for negative-contrast conditions and highest for positive-contrast conditions. Furthermore, the threshold increase across the age range was lower for Clearview than
than for Highway Gothic. This suggests that Clearview offers improved legibility, especially for older drivers with potential declines in visual processing. The studies’ results indicate that additional scientific evaluations of signage legibility in different operating contexts are warranted, hinting at the potential benefit of using Clearview over Highway Gothic. It is for these reasons that Clearview remains an option for interim usage. It is simply more legible in certain conditions than Highway Gothic is.
LEFT: evolution of Clearview sketches ABOVE: Clearview type family
When it comes to legibility, Clearview set out to improve upon the previous typeface Highway Gothic in two main ways. Firstly, Clearview makes use of substantially thinner strokes. The thicker line weight of Highway Gothic reportedly caused problems with halation, which is the tendency of the reflected light from
letterforms to bleed into less-defined shapes. This effect is especially prevalent at night, when headlights beam directly onto roadway signs and those beams are reflected right back at the driver. The thinner overall weight of Clearview was an attempt to cut down on this halation and maintain the visual sharpness of the letterforms even during nighttime
driving. Secondly, counters in the Clearview type system are substantially larger than in Highway Gothic. Counters are the pockets of negative space within letterforms, especially lowercase letters. Think of a, b, e, o, p, etc.. Once again, these counters were made larger in an attempt to decrease halation, thus increasing legibility and
differentiating more dramatically between letterforms. These two key areas of type design were the theses of Clearview’s conception and what the typeface sought to improve upon.
OPPOSITE: screenshot of Clearview in typesetting software
ABOVE: comparison of counters and strokes between Highway Gothic and Clearview
type analysis: Highway Gothic
Even though Highway Gothic has space for improvement, it is still a highly effective typeface. After all, it’s been the sole/primary roadway sign typeface since 1948. It performs well in both positive and negative contrast situations due to its weight and the size of its counters. These aspects of its design give it a different appearance when compared to Clearview. Side-by-side, Highway Gothic appears more bulbous and balloon-like. This is partly due to the thicker weight of lines but is also affected by its comparatively short
x-height. As a result of measures to improve legibility, Clearview has an increased x-height, and it is quite obvious when viewed next to Highway Gothic. Additionally, Highway Gothic’s counters are noticeably smaller and, when viewed together on a screen, Clearview seems like the obvious choice from a legibility standpoint. It gets interesting, however, when environmental aspects are taken into account. Driving and reading conditions do not often consist of soft lighting and clear skys when on the road. Sunlight is often harsh.
It’s too bright, not bright enough, or segmented by shadows. Furthermore, weather conditions such as fog and rain make halation and visibility much worse. It is these adverse viewing conditions that the designers of Highway Gothic and Clearview are interested in. Highway Gothic continues to perform quite well in such conditions, and that is why Clearview has yet to take over as the next standard alphabet of US motorways.
ABOVE: Highway Gothic on sign in Pensacola, FL
LEFT: Highway Gothic “a” in lowercase
OPPOSITE: Highway Gothic on detour sign in Pensacola, FL
conclusions
This publication has taken us through the form, function, and meaning of typography applied to roadway sign design, but it also got me thinking about how little we know about how the type we use came to be. The development of roadway typography is surprisingly complex and involved. Being able to zoom out and look at the history and
innovations, as well as the current state of typography on US roadways makes for a surprisingly fun read. So far, I have found that it is often the type that we dismiss as commonplace, ordinary, or everyday that has a long and winding history. This is part of what makes typography so fascinating to me. Written language is one of mankind’s oldest technologies, resulting in a
plethora of highly specialized expressions of language at our disposal today. Even when we select contemporary typefaces to apply to contemporary issues, we are unable to completely extricate ourselves from the thousands of years of written language informing our current, digital typefaces.
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