When British Rail unveiled its comprehensive corporate identity in 1964, one of the key elements which made it work was a new typeface.
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When British Rail unveiled its comprehensive corporate identity in 1964, one of the key elements which made it work was a new typeface. It was called Rail Alphabet and it has subsequently proved to be the most successful and long-lasting element of the corporate identity. Rail Alphabet.
Picture by Pneumaman (UniversSpec.png) or , was one of the most comprehensive ever adopted by any British transport company, and indeed probably any transport company (you can read two earlier entries about it and ). It was designed to wipe out the existing hotchpotch of styles and motifs which had graphically illustrated the confused nature of the business from its creation in 1948 until that point. British Railways (as it was publicly known until 1966) even had multiple typefaces in use on its signage and its trains. Most frequently seen was Gill Sans, a chilly all-upper case typeface dating from before the second world war and inherited from the London and North Eastern Railway. This bossy and sometimes difficult typeface seemed increasingly out of place in the more informal 1960s, as longstanding social norms were challenged or abandoned.
Meanwhile, a condensed (narrow) rectangular font served for train numbers on many locomotives. And I’m afraid I can’t think of any word other than ‘ugly’ for that one.Rail Alphabet was the answer to these challenges. It was a mixed upper and lower case typeface, instantly looking more friendly than Gill Sans. It was well proportioned, with nicely rounded ‘0’s, ‘o’s and ‘O’s for instance – unlike the rectangular locomotive lettering. It would go on to be applied everywhere across the British Rail network, including the company’s road vehicles, hovercraft and ships.
Because this blog doesn’t feature hovercraft very often, here is Rail Alphabet on a cross-channel hovercraft: British Rail operated cross-channel hovercraft like this one under the Seaspeed brand between 1966 and 1981. Photo by 70023venus2009 viaIt wasn’t actually British Rail’s first go at a new typeface for the rail blue corporate identity. The company had been much impressed by launched in the 1960s. British Railways tried out signage using Transport at Coventry station (as detailed ), but it wasn’t entirely satisfactory.As Calvert would later explain, the problem was that Transport was designed to be quickly assimilated by drivers as road signs were approached at speed. In a station environment, where there was more time to read signage, speed of interpretation was no longer the key concern. Calvert and Kinneir were asked to design a typeface specifically for the railway, and so it was that this pair of designers ended up defining the ‘feel’ not just of Britain’s roads, but its railways (and later, its airports too). If anyone can lay any claim to having branded Britain in the post-war period, it is surely Calvert and Kinneir.
No-one else has come close to designing so much of what creates the everyday experience of the appearance of Britain’s public realm.The result of Calvert and Kinneir’s assessment of the needs of a typeface at railway stations as opposed to one being designed for roads is that Rail Alphabet’s letters are slightly heavier and more closely spaced than those of Transport, with less exaggerated tails on the letters. It is similar to Helvetica, but distinctively different, though it’s hard to say exactly why. It’s certainly more tightly spaced, and I think the width of the letter strokes is a little more consistent throughout. One of the best places to see Rail Alphabet was on the large “Solari” departure boards at stations.
This is Charing Cross in 2002. The Rail Alphabet departure board dates from British Rail days, while later signage (with blue backgrounds) is in Railtrack’s Brunel typeface.
Photo by James Gibbon at en.wikipedia (Own work) or ,Deliberately, Rail Alphabet is neither showy nor shouty. Calvert described it as “low-key”, intended to stand out from the commercial signage at stations which was more flamboyant. “It’s ordinary,” she said. “People think nobody designed it, because it’s ordinary.”¹ Rail Alphabet is all about the message, not the medium.
It is designed with simplicity in mind, to give information without the character of the lettering distracting from or overwhelming the message being conveyed. The mix of upper and lower case text was definitely easier to take in than the bossy all-upper case Gill Sans it replaced.
Thanks for an interesting article.It’s lovely to see such admiration for Rail Alphabet, an underrated and under-recognised typeface that hasn’t really been bettered. South West Trains’ recent roll-out of Brunel not only looks bland and dowdy by comparison, but seems to be less readable at distances or in low lighting than Rail Alphabet was!Alas, I think the “Stop, Look, Listen” sign pictured is in Helvetica – the diagonal of the digit 2 is curved instead of angled, and the top of the lower case f doesn’t have that distinctive flat/squashed look.That Swedish hospital signage really.does.
look like Rail Alphabet though – I’m gobsmacked to see it got that far! What a find!As far as I can tell, Rail Alphabet is still going strong at Arriva Trains Wales in particular. They’ve used it for all their new or refurbished stations recently, along with on-board signage on recently-refurbished trains. (Frutiger and Helvetica do crop up occasionally, but I think that’s probably where they’ve used a different contractor to normal for a small one-off job.)Merseyrail and First Great Western also seem to be fans at the moment – but it remains to be seen if that’ll change with the pending rebrand of the latter. Thanks Alex, glad you enjoyed it.
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You might be right about the “Stop Look Listen” board. I’m lost in admiration for people who can distinguish accurately the identity of fonts.
I don’t find it nearly so easy, so thank you. That said, given that the relevant Railway Group Standard says that lineside notices have to be set in Rail Alphabet, if that particular sign is in Helvetica then it’s been done wrong! At some point I’ll do a survey of some of the post-privatisation typefaces used by train operators.
My particular least-favourite is the one used on the Network West Midlands stations around Birmingham. I’m sure it’s very clever, and I don’t doubt it has many fans, but to me it just looks like bubble writing. I’m not an expert in fonts, but I’m pretty sure “Stop, Look, Listen” is in Helvetica Bold. The Helvetica “a” is very different in bold to the regular weight and looks very much like the Rail Alphabet “a”.
The main difference is that in Helvetica the stroke thickness varies, and so far as I can see that’s the case here.And, as mentioned above, the “2” is curved and the “f”‘s don’t look flattened.I don’t know if I can post links here, but I found a web saying that while the standards say that signs should use Rail Alphabet, for a long time there was no computerised version available, so the only practical option was to ask for the signs to be produced in Helvetica Bold.The link is.
Prior to nationalisation, railways in the United Kingdom were awash with different logos, typefaces and identities.With the formation of British Railways in 1948 came the opportunity to standardise corporate image, but that has changed once again following privatisation in the 1990s.You can read our short article on or download typefaces and fonts below. Gill Sans / British Railways eraIn 1949 the (a division of the British Transport Commission) decided on standard types of signs to be used at all stations.Lettering was to use the typeface on a coloured background, which was determined by the regional division. This style persisted for nearly 15 years.A copy of the Gill Sans MT font can be downloaded below as a zip file.
As far as we are aware, the font is free to distribute for personal use.★ Gill Sans MT. Rail Alphabet / British Rail eraThe original Rail Alphabet typeface is a commercial product, however a free version of two similar fonts was made available a number of years ago via the Railways Archive website and can be found on a variety of other websites and forms.These fonts are a very close likeness to the original typeface and are ideal for a variety of railway modelling needs. A copy can be downloaded below as a zip file. As far as we are aware, whilst the original typeface Rail Alphabet remains copyrighted, these fonts are free to distribute for personal use.★ British Rail Light Normal★ British Rail Dark Normal. Joanna Typeface / Regional Railways eraRegional Railways was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982 (the other two being InterCity and Network SouthEast). Alongside the organisational changes came a new logo and livery.Joanna, the typeface used for Regional Railways/ScotRail, is a commercial typeface and is not available for free. There are, however, one or two free alternatives which can give reasonable results.A unicode version of one of the Joanna typeface fonts is widely available.
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This provides a reasonable likeness for normal and bold text in replicas of platform notices etc. However, it is not heavy enough for recreating the specially-drawn Regional Railways or ScotRail logos.If you wish to make up your own logos, you may wish to consider using the Jessica-Serial font. As shown below, this is a fairly close match, but will require bold weighting and alterations to leading, tracking and some individual characters’ horizontal and vertical scales.A zip file containing the following fonts is available. As far as we are aware, the fonts are free to distribute for personal use:★ Unicode Joanna★ Jessica-Serial. ITC Officina Typeface / Transport Scotland eraIn September 2008, the Scottish Government’s transport agency, Transport Scotland, announced that the franchised Scottish rail services would be permanently renamed ScotRail and a new livery would be applied to all of Scotland’s trains and ScotRail-operated stations.For locomotives, multiple units and rolling stock, the new livery features a dark blue background, with grey doors and a white dotted ‘Saltire’ Scottish flag. For station names and general signage, dark blue becomes the predominant colour and is used alongside a new typeface called ITC Officina.This ITC Officina font family is widely available for free download and four of its fonts are available here:★ ITC Officina Std Book★ ITC Officina Std Book Italic★ ITC Officina Std Bold★ ITC Officina Std Bold Italic.
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