Site-specific installation by Tomo Tomo, commissioned by the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and YesMilano in the Metro 5 station of Portello, Milan.

Fundamentals was developed for the Olympic Winter Games 2026 in Milan and Cortina. The installation highlights the four disciplines hosted in Milan – ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, and short track speed skating – bringing sport and art together.

Through a series of large-scale illustrations, the installation reveals key movements, rules, historical facts, figures and the stories of champions. Drawing on images selected from the Olympic Museum’s collections and reinterpreted in a graphic style inspired by Futurismo, the metro station becomes a place of discovery woven into everyday life.

The installation blends together moving images, infographics, and visually striking typography. Fully composed in Söhne Fett and Söhne Mono Kräftig by Klim Type Foundry.

A project curated by Zero.

This geometric sans-serif typeface was designed for the original section of the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) Yonge subway line. The typeface and TTC logo were developed during the construction of Line 1 Yonge–University in the 1940s, perhaps by draughtsman Philip Butt, but the original designer has never been determined. The font is composed of capital letters sandblasted into the tiles of Toronto subway stations opened between 1954 and 1974, as well as on signs.

The sui generis Toronto Subway font was designed in 2004 by David Vereschagin, who visited stations, took photos, and made rubbings of the letters on the original Vitrolite glass tiles. Vereschagin also designed a matching lowercase, inspired by Futura and similar designs.

By 2007, “TTC wayfinding typography” was a case study in what not to do, confusing users and neglecting local typographic heritage by incorporating a jumble of Univers, Swiss 721 and Gill Sans, as documented by Joe Clark in a presentation to the 2007 ATypI conference.

In 2013, the TTC created a design and wayfinding team who readopted the typeface, calling it Bloor-Yonge after the busy station at the intersection of two lines, and they began to re-apply it through the system. Lines recently built by the new regional transit authority, Metrolinx, only use the iconic typeface in some signage as a “decorative element.” Most wayfinding signage is in the new Metrolinx standard of ClearviewADA.

The Union station signage shown is from the 2014 renovation and expansion. The Eglinton station signage is original to 1954 and is a lighter weight used this way only in one other station. The exit sign is also a first use from 1954. The St Andrew station and “PLEASE HOLD HANDRAIL” sign are from the first line extension in 1963.

See also the Toronto Transit Commission Signage and Wayfinding Standards (2023).

The completion of the Moynihan Train Hall created a world-class transit gateway for New York City. Located across the street from Penn Station in the landmarked James A. Farley Building designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1913, the new train hall expands the capacity of Penn Station by providing additional concourse space and access to the existing nine train platforms and 17 tracks that run below it.

Branding was done by Watson & Company utilizing both Empirica and Mallory by Frere-Jones Type.

From World-Architects:

When Moynihan Train Hall opened on New Year’s Day, it marked the completion of what had been a long-held dream for New York City. It is one of the most monumental civic projects undertaken in the city in a generation, and transforms the way millions of people will interact with the city. The project extends Penn Station with a 255,000-square-foot rail hub that services the Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak. It also connects directly with the Eighth Avenue Subway, and plans are in the works to connect it to MetroNorth and AirTrain JFK. For every traveler who passes through the space, the architecture will restore the grandeur of train travel at Penn Station.

Demon ruchu (“The Motion Demon”, 1919) by Stefan Grabiński is a classic work of Polish horror in which the railway becomes a space filled with metaphysical mysteries. In this collection of stories, trains, stations, and tunnels form a dark universe where the inexplicable constantly breaks through everyday order. The characters, haunted by premonitions and visions, teeter on the brink of madness, and the very act of travel takes on an almost mystical dimension.

The new edition by Dwie siostry was designed by Jacek Ambrożewski, using Tor grotesk for cover, titles, drop caps, and emphasis; and BC Figural for text. It is enriched with evocative illustrations by Rita Kaczmarska and includes additional stories planned for the never-published third edition. The volume appears as the fifth installment of the “Świeżym Okiem” (“Fresh Eye”) series, offering a refreshed, visually striking version of this classic of the uncanny.

336 pages, 14.5 × 21.5 cm

Floor plan map of the Taipei Main Station, an interchange station for the Taiwan Railway, Taiwan High Speed Rail, Taipei Metro, and Taoyuan Metro. It was made by Alexwikix using Checkpoint Font, a retro heavy-duty industrial Japanese typeface inspired from 1930s Japanese poster typefaces made by Yoku Tobanai Tori for Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) text.

Dongtan Station Art Station_MARS 151 is an art project that imagines a journey from Hwaseong, a city on Earth, to Mars, a planet in the universe. Through this journey, visitors are invited to envision a sustainable future through art.

In Korean, the name of the city Hwaseong (화성) refers both to the city where Dongtan Station is located and the planet Mars. This shared pronunciation creates a poetic link between reality and imagination.

The number 151 refers to Dongtan Station’s address (151 Dongtan-yeok-ro), a major transportation hub, while MARS symbolises an alternative planet envisioned by humanity.

Over three weeks of exhibitions, performances, lectures, and children’s workshops, Dongtan Station was transformed into the boarding platform of the Eco Spaceship MARS 151.

The project’s visual identity, designed by studio moonanhan, features a dynamic key image that conveys a sense of motion through time and space. The accompanying poster series combines tactile visual textures that invite multiple interpretations in line with the exhibition’s concept. Recognising the symbolic importance of Dongtan Station within the project, the design also visually emphasises B4, Dongtan Station.

For the main title, Hofmann by Nguyen Gobber was selected for its bold, futuristic character. The fluid curves of these Latin letters are contrasted by the rather straight geometric lines of the figures, which are set in Slight Chance by David Jonathan Ross. Dates are set in PF Expo by Parachute Type Foundry, and all Korean text was set in Noto Sans KR by Sandoll, and Pretendard by Hyung-jin Kil.

This unique album was published in a limited run of 500 copies by Layup Galery – the result of a five-year process behind the creation of the Outsiders exhibition, captured in a carefully designed publication. The visual concept was developed by Olek Modzelewski, with editorial work by Cezary Hunkiewicz. The album features photographs of all artworks by invited artists, documentation of the SKM train entering the hall, in-depth interviews, and first-time published materials. Each copy is hand-numbered, making it not only a publication but also a collectible object.

Layup Galery is an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary urban art, located on the post-shipyard grounds of Gdańsk. Established in 2015, it was one of the first alternative cultural institutions to emerge in this post-industrial area. Housed in the giant historic Hall 94b, Layup presents a unique gallery focused on artists rooted in the graffiti scene. The collection includes over 50 works by internationally recognized artists such as Moses & Taps™, Rage, Sabe, Rocco and His Brothers, Sebas Velasco, Sainer, Martí Sawe, Karso, Finer, M-City, Krik, and Sicoer, as well as a fully preserved 24-ton EN71 048 SKM train car.

The book interior (336 pages + a 24-page insert printed with silver spot color) was printed on Arctic Volume White 115 g/m² and Munken Print White 115 g/m² by Arctic Paper. The Swiss-bound hardcover was wrapped in Natural Art Silk Eggshell White paper, with embossing on the front and spine.

The cover typography features both weights of Grand Central, Bold and Light.

LTypI is a moniker for the act of picking a typeface because its name matches the content. Some cases have little to do with an actual lack of typographic imagination, and rather are just wonderfully topical. This book is such an example. Authored by Anthony W. Robbins and the New York Transit Museum, it was published in 2013 to celebrate the centennial of New York’s Grand Central Terminal.

For the cover, contents, and chapter titles, Topos Graphics opted for Grand Central. What else would have been more appropriate? Tobias Frere-Jones designed this all-caps typeface in the mid-1990s when the station underwent a full renovation. Two Twelve hired him “to design a typeface in Grand Central’s distinct Beaux-Arts style”, to “keep new locator maps and signage in harmony with the old lettering.” [Frere-Jones Type] When the station was built in the 1910s, signpainters used “an American take” on the so-called “French Oldstyle”, a genre that goes back to French printer Louis Perrin and his mid-19th century reinterpretation of ancient Roman lettering, the Caractères Augustaux. The characteristic R with its curved and pointed leg can also be found in the tile lettering for the subway sign.

In 2018, Frere-Jones together with Nina Stössinger revisited the theme, then with lowercase characters and as a six-weight family with italics. The resulting typeface, Empirica, happens to be used on the Grand Central Terminal’s website.

Colophon and contents

Detail from the table of contents

Grand Central is also used for chapter titles.

The typeface used for body copy, captions and running titles is Sentinel.

Sign at Birmingham New Street, photograph taken 20 September 2024

In 1994, Britain’s conservative government started dismantling the country’s railway network as part of their privatization policy. A new company called Railtrack was given the task of maintaining the railway infrastructure – the tracks, signals, bridges, the major stations – while other new companies (the ‘train operating companies’) were created to provide services on various routes and to pay money to Railtrack for the right to access the tracks.

These new companies were able to move away from the classical British Railway branding – that famous Rail Alphabet typeface in stark black and white established in the 1960s. For example, Great Western Railway Company adopted Adrian Frutiger’s Glypha typeface.

The brand design for Railtrack was developed by leading agency Citigate Lloyd Northover (founded by John Lloyd and Jim Northover). Northover writes:

When commissioned to update the UK rail system signs (in part for digital application), we proposed alignment with the continental use of blue grounds with white lettering in preference to the earlier black on white, thus making the words and pictograms stand out more clearly. The new type design, which we called Brunel, saved space and improved clarity. Brunel was carefully realised by typographers David Quay and Freda Sack from our design brief, with different weights to accommodate illuminated and non-illuminated messages. The typeface was envisaged for use across the UK rail network, but as individual rail operators adopted their own designs Brunel became restricted to the major stations managed by Network Rail.

Freda Sack, David Quay’s partner in The Foundry, talks about the development of Brunel:

We seemed to get a run of transport projects. Working with consultancy Citigate Lloyd Northover we developed the typeface Brunel (1998). It was commissioned for use in mainline UK railway stations, and was a favorite project for me, again because of the strict parameters. For that project, though, we were, on the whole, designing for much larger use on signage, including some of the first plasma screens. It was a great brief. The typeface had to look English – although of course it is used all over the UK – and had to have authority. In addition to its basic information/directional functions, the type was also required to bring some visual consistency to station environments, countering the confusion of the prevalence of visual identities adopted by the various new train operating companies then being formed, and the visual noise of station concourse shopping.

David Quay comments:

Railtrack too was a challenge, but a pleasant one [...] that I named the font ‘Brunel’ after my childhood hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The Brunel font was never released commercially. If it had been, the name might have been reconsidered, because there was already a typeface called Brunel – an English Modern serif typeface designed by Paul Barnes in 1995 with later input from Christian Schwartz in 2005. Schwartz describes their Brunel as “an anthology of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century English foundries.”

At some point Railtrack's Brunel font became known as NR Brunel (NR for Network Rail). This was because, after a string of disasters and poor decisions, the Railtrack company had been renationalized and renamed Network Rail in 2002.

Thanks to a post on Daniel Wright’s excellent The Beauty of Transport blog, we can follow the results of a freedom of information (FOI) request which leads us eventually to a copy of Network Rail’s design manual: Design Guidelines 2010, developed by Steer Davies Gleave. This shows specimens for NR Brunel Regular and NR Brunel Bold and asserts that:

This is the only font allowed on signs.

This font is an evolution of the ‘Brunel’ typeface, previously in use and designed specifically for wayfinding purposes.

(This FOI response also provides a copy of the Brunel font, now named as NewBrunel and dated 2010, in TTF format. I expect that including this was an administrative oversight on the part of the FOI responder.)

Originally the tops of the ascenders of letters such as b, d, h, k, and l were flat, but at some point (perhaps also in 2002, or as part of the ‘evolution’) they were given sloping tops. Also, the 1 digit was given a base to stand on.

Usage of NR Brunel has been steadily increasing across the network since it was introduced nearly thirty years ago, with new and refurbished stations boldly going full Brunel. It might even have become the new official standard font for all UK railways if the Chris Green/Peter Hall ‘Better Rail Stations’ report had been implemented in full. The advice on page 30 of this 2009 report was:

Station Signage

To ensure network consistency and reduced franchise costs, all signage should be in standard ‘Brunel’ script with white letters on a dark blue background. Thereafter, name signs should not be changed when train company ownership changes.

However, the newly-nationalized British Railways has decided that in the future all railway signage should use Rail Alphabet 2:

Great British Railways will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network, replacing the many different fonts used on railway signage.

So the Rail Alphabet will gradually replace the Brunel font which had originally ousted it back in 1998. But it’s likely to be many years before the final traces of Brunel disappear from our stations. Until then, you can happily spend a few minutes contemplating the convoluted history of the UK rail network – both as political football and as a succession of design choices – while you’re waiting for your train.

Photograph taken at Kings Cross 29 May 2025; type in both white on dark blue and black on white

Photograph taken at Paddington Station on 29 May 2025. Colour matching is hard…

Photograph taken at Paddington Station on 29 May 2025

Photograph taken at Waterloo Station on 29 May 2025; the new standard Rail Alphabet 2 is used for the big signs in the background, while the previous standard Brunel is still used for other signage (at the time of writing)

Photograph taken at Waterloo Station on 29 May 2025

Photograph taken at Cranbrook Station on 2 June 2025; this station was built in 2015, but the version of the Brunel font used here has the flat-topped ascenders

Network Rail’s design manual Managed Stations Wayfinding, developed by Steer Davies Gleave, 2010

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, or TriMet, is a transit agency that serves most of the Oregon section of the Portland metropolitan area: Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas County.

TriMet provides various services, including the TriMet MAX light rail, WES Commuter Rail, and bus services.

TriMet’s third-phase logo, which came out in 2002, features TheMix in a bold weight and all-capital letters. Their slogan and much of their branding use Source Sans. On the website, Source Sans is paired with Zilla Slab for headings.

The TriMet logo on the new MAX car design introduced in 2015. Station signs use TheMix as well.

Timeline of the TriMet story featuring the original logo with hyphen. The website typography pairs Source Sans and Zilla Slab.

Following their international specialist conference on railway heritage preservation in 2022, the Specialist Service for the Preservation of Historical Monuments of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and the Chair of Construction Heritage and Preservation (ETH) have published a comprehensive volume with 50 contributions from authors from more than 10 countries, highlighting and discussing the many challenges and opportunities of the young field of heritage preservation.

The trilingual texts and the titlings in the sewn-bound volume with 460 pages are typeset with the regular and black cuts of Neue Moderne Grotesk FSL, while the cover variants reference a typographic hodgepodge of Neue Moderne Grotesk FSL, Futura, Helvetica and Univers Condensed, plus some unidentified numerals and color patterns found in typical mid-1900 Swiss railway tickets. In a wider context the format of the book (170×280 cm) references the typical Edmondson railway ticket that has been in use from 1840 until recently in countries all over the world. This also resonates with the international contributions about the topic of the railway heritage preservation (excerpt from the Schwabe Verlag):

The construction of many national railway networks was essentially completed in the early 20th century. Since then, the operation of the railway system with its buildings and artistically designed constructions has required constant adaptation to changing technical standards and requirements for usage requirements. It is only in this way that the functionality, safety and economic efficiency of the railway system can be guaranteed. However, the pressure to change is not only inherent to the system but is also driven by socio-political processes. How does the preservation of railway heritage position itself in this field of tension? What characterises the existing railway transport system and what heritage values are associated with it?

Eisenbahndenkmalpflege – Préservation du patrimoine ferroviaire – Railway Heritage Preservation was published by Schwabe Verlag and designed by Huber/Sterzinger and Miloš Gavrić. The book was printed by Merkur Medien on Werkdruck and Bierdeckelkarton papers by Fischer Papier. Texts in German, French, or English, with translated abstracts.

Extra love to Joshua Schenkel for the Edmondson railway ticket history and Weichi He for the custom embossing type.

The Pankstraße subway station in Berlin was built in 1977 by the then responsible Baudirektor Rainer Gerhard Rümmler as part of the construction of the U8 subway line. The station’s name is mounted directly on the wall in individual aluminum letters using the typeface Octopuss, designed by Colin Brignall in 1970. The name is spelled with a double s instead of the eszett (ß), ignoring the correct German spelling.

As of March 2025, the station is under refurbishment. The images below show its status in 2002 and, by Ingolf, in 2012.

After several centuries of total russification of Ukraine by the Russian Empire, the reverse process – derussification – is finally taking place. Hundreds of thousands of names of cities, streets, metro stations, and brands are either returning their original Ukrainian names or getting new ones.

On 29 April 2024, the metro station Пушкинская (Pushkinskaya) in the city of Kharkiv was renamed to Ярослава Мудрого (Yaroslava Mudroho, in English: Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev in the XI century). In July 2024, Kharkiv Metropolitan employees installed eight sets of letters with the new name on the walls of the station.

For the inscription, the Kharkiv Metropolitan used Sealt, a font family developed by Michael Rafailyk in 2021. Sealt is inspired by the oldest saltworks in Eastern Europe, founded in 1250 in Drohobych, Ukraine. Sealt means salt in Old English, so most letters are rough and sharp like salt crystals and seem to be carved out of the rock.

Photo: james millner. License: All Rights Reserved.

Sign at Exeter St Davids rail station, photographed in August 2024, showing its age – or in need of some cleaning at least

From Nick Job’s doublearrow.co.uk:

In 1964 Design Research Unit—Britain's first multi-disciplinary design agency founded in 1943 by Misha Black, Milner Gray and Herbert Read—was commissioned to breathe new life into the nation's neglected railway industry, the corporate image of which had remained largely unchanged after its nationalisation in 1948, a reflection of a largely disjointed and out-of-date transport system. The company name was shortened to British Rail and Gerry Barney of Design Research Unit conceived the famous ‘double-arrow’, a remarkably robust and memorable icon that has far outlasted British Rail itself and continues to be used on traffic signs throughout the United Kingdom as the symbol for the national rail network and more specifically railway stations on that network. The new corporate identity programme was launched in January 1965 with an exhibition at the Design Council, London.

After briefly testing the Transport typeface that Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir had recently designed for all UK road signs, the Design Research Unit asked them to make a similar typeface more suitable for the railway network – for people walking down platforms and sitting in trains, rather than driving down motorways. The result was Rail Alphabet, and it’s been used throughout the rail network ever since, at over 2,000 stations.

The British Rail Corporate Identity manual (1964–1965) contains detailed specifications for:
— the Rail Alphabet, which “closely resembles. but is different from, Helvetica Medium as specified for printed applications”
— the brand colours, Rail Blue, Rail Grey and Rail Red
— the “two-way traffic arrows on parallel lines representing tracks” symbol, the well-known British Rail Double Arrow logo.

For more information about British Rail's design and branding, refer to Daniel Wright’s excellent web site, The Beauty of Transport.

Source: www.doublearrow.co.uk License: All Rights Reserved.

The basic elements of the Rail Alphabet, from the British Rail Corporate Identity Manual 1964

The original Rail Alphabet shares Helvetica genes. It’s a bit more solid, a bit more compact, with a raised x-height. The digits 2 and 7 are straight rather than curved. The M looks chunkier, the J has lost some of its curviness, the f is contained.

Although still to be seen on many stations, the original Rail Alphabet has been “departing our platforms” for over 20 years. Some of the privatization branding efforts in the 1990s adopted different typefaces (e.g., Brunel, Glypha), and it will eventually be replaced entirely by Rail Alphabet 2. But at present you can still see ageing examples on many stations across the country, functional despite being covered with years of railway grime, and patiently awaiting their time for rejuvenation.

Photo: james millner. License: All Rights Reserved.

Sign at Torquay rail station

License: All Rights Reserved.

A slightly puzzling sign at Paignton rail station

Photo: james millner. License: All Rights Reserved.

Signs at Bristol Temple Meads rail station

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Mike Ashworth. License: All Rights Reserved.

A few surviving BR signs in Rail Alphabet in place at Lancaster station, September 2020

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Mike Ashworth. License: All Rights Reserved.

A four sides hanging internally illuminated box sign at Preston station featuring Rail Alphabet and the BR arrow logo, December 2021

Station sign; Exeter St Davids, two hours from London on the Great Western Railway

The original Great Western Railway company was founded in 1833. It ran train services that linked London to the Midlands, the South West, and parts of Wales, and employed Isambard Kingdom Brunel as its chief engineer. Brunel even dreamed of being able to sell a single ticket to allow travel from London Paddington to New York, via the SS Great Western.

The company became part of the British Railways Board in the nationalization of 1948. After privatization in the 1990s, the assets ended up as part of First Great Western, which was then relaunched in 2015 as Great Western Railway, with a new brand identity developed by John Rushworth at Pentagram.

Rushworth’s team was briefed to create an identity that “marked the start of a renaissance of rail”. The new look aims to show that “we are a rail company again and we are proud of it.”

Apart from the GWR logo, the branding is mostly evident to passengers in the form of the Glypha typeface, on everything from station names to trains to timetables.

It's possible that this typeface will be slowly phased out over the next few years; the font chosen by newly-nationalized Great British Railways for all signage is Rail Alphabet 2.

On the side of the train carriage

Signs at Exeter St Davids station

The facade at Exeter St Davids. Probably to save money and effort, the old signage was untouched when the new brand was applied.

The station as seen in August 2015

Vladivostok railway station is the eastern terminus of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting Moscow in the west with Russia’s far east. Construction started in May 1891 after plans by architect P.E. Bazilevsky. The station building opened its doors on November 2, 1893.

The sign on the roof is much younger, even though the typeface used for “ВЛАДИВОСТОК” dates back to 1904: it’s a Cyrillic adaptation of Arnold Böcklin. The Jugendstil design originated at the Otto Weisert foundry in Stuttgart, Germany. Chances are the sign was installed during restoration works carried out between 1994 and 1996. A photo from 1992 shows a different sign.

Close-up, July 2019

The illuminated sign at night, September 2015

In September 2004, the second line reading “Вокзал” (station) was still missing.

The sign in Arnold Böcklin was already installed in December 1999, when this photo was taken.

Source: www.kyivtypefoundry.com Matvii Masliukov. License: All Rights Reserved.

Palats Sportu (Палац Спорту) is a station on Kyiv Metro’s “green line”, officially known as the Syretsko-Pecherska Line. It was designed by architect Mykola Alyoshkin and opened in 1989. The sign on the station wall comprises brass letters cast in Novohrad-Volynsky stating the name in Cyrillic capitals: “ПАЛАЦ СПОРТУ”. There is an image depicting an old version “ДВОРЕЦ СПОРТА” in Russian that was dismantled in the course of derussification. The authorship of these curios letterforms remained unknown for a long time, then attributed to the architect Alyoshkin himself, until Kyiv Type Foundry’s team found out the original (thanks to Florian Hardwig) during their Kyiv Metro Fonts project.

Matvii Masliukov. License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail of the letters “ПОР”

It’s typefaces called New York 30 and was made by Dutch designer Leo Meuffels for Mecanorma, a French competitor to Letraset, in 1984. It is likely that the Mecanorma catalog got into Alyoshkin’s hands. Alyoshkin says: “I don't remember where I saw these letters, perhaps it was a catalogue that circulated at the Metroprojekt. I wasn't happy about their size at the wall. They should have been bigger. Bronze was very expensive in the USSR.”

Matvii Masliukov. License: All Rights Reserved.

Further uses of the font are lesser known. One case can be found in the second volume of Yasaburo Kuwayama’s book International Logotypes from 1990, where “MEGAVIDEO” appears in the “dotted” logotype genre showcase as no. 2428.

Source: drive.google.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The discovery of the Megavideo logo in the second volume of Yasaburo Kuwayama’s book International Logotypes from 1990 suggested that the letterforms in the metro stations are not custom, but come from a typeface.

Dutch graphic designer Wout de Vringer chose BVH Baldinger to typeset the text on this set of stamps titled 175 jaar spoorwegen in Nederland. He comments:

In September 2014 PostNL published ten unique stamps to commemorate 175 years of railways in the Netherlands. According to Simone Bel, Corporate Communications director at PostNL, it is an important accomplishment that PostNL has now immortalised the train and the railway as iconic elements in Dutch society. “I am convinced that these stamps will evoke warm and happy memories of railways for many people.” The stamps portray the rich history of railways in the Netherlands. The ‘175 years of Dutch railways’ stamps comprise a collage of images including trains, locomotives, old and new NS logos, station clocks and old and new railway stations. Each individual stamp is a collage of several images. History, future and dynamic development are key. The stamps were chosen as the most beautiful Dutch stamps of 2014.

Since 2013, Lyon Metropolis and the City of Lyon, France, have initiated a renovation project of the area of the Lyon Part-Dieu train station. Initially designed and constructed in order to welcome 35,000 passengers per day, the train station is now the primary European connecting station, with 125,000 travelers each day. This change in density required an architectural restructuration of the station, as well as a new wayfinding system to regulate the flux of passengers.

The whole project is carried out by urban planning and architecture studio AUC Paris. For the graphic design, they reached out to studio Encore, led by Quentin Brachet. Encore designed three different types of signs for the wayfinding. First, metal signs directly embedded in the ground of the station. These level with the surrounding stone slabs, and at the same time stand out through the change of material. Then, sign posts with the indication of places put vertically; and finally, bigger poles including maps and directions.

For all these supports, Encore chose to work with Synthese, designed by Gilles Poplin and Jean-Baptiste Levée from Production Type. Synthese combines different aspects of famous sans serifs from the 20th century, making it an Univers-like typeface from our time. However, its design is rounder and shows more personality than its predecessors: it is more welcoming, less impersonal, and thus more adapted to the design problems of our time, where the density of population paradoxically makes people lonelier.

See also Synthese in use for the Lyon Part-Dieu business area.

Metro Bilbao is the subway system of Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque Country in northern Spain. It uses Rotis SemiSans for signage and communications.

The corporate design including the logo as well as the wayfinding system were designed by Otl Aicher and developed by his team members Michael Weiss and Hans Brucklacher.

In 1988, the contract for the underground metro system in Bilbao was awarded to the architects Sir Norman Foster and partners, following an open competition. The same year the first underground station was opened in Erandio, on the existing Bilbao-Plentzia railway. [Wikipedia] According to Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura MUGAK, this “exemplar mass transport information design project was realized thanks to [Aicher’s] special relationship with […] Foster”. Bilbao’s subway signage system was the last important design project of Aicher. Born in 1922, the German graphic designer and Ulm School of Design main co-founder died in 1991, and didn’t live to see the opening of the first part of line 1 in November 1995.

From the brand presentation:

The symbol of Metro Bilbao is an abstract figure based on tunnels and wheels in movement. It is formed by three rings of different thicknesses, which “move” inside each other. Their thickness grows in the direction of reading (left to right) and creates a sensation of movement that perfectly expresses the dynamic nature of this means of transport.

The wordmark uses Rotis SemiSans 65 Bold, in lowercase letters. The serifless yet contrasted typeface is part of Aicher’s Rotis superfamily, which also comprises Rotis SansSerif, Rotis SemiSerif, and Rotis Serif. The initial eight Rotis styles were released in 1988 for AGFA Compugraphic’s laser and digital imagesetters, followed by Postscript versions for desktop use.

On Issuu, Michael Weiss has shared the brand manual as published in November 1995 in three volumes; Vol. 1 (introduction, basic signs, materials), Vol. 2 (stationery, publications, promotion, advertising), and Vol. 3 (signage, rolling stock, equipment). In 2020, Metro Bilbao still uses the identity with Rotis SemiSans, with applications ranging from station signs to social media.

Casco Viejo station sign.

Areeta station, 2018.

“Trena geldi dagoenean sartu.” (Basque for “Enter when the train is stationary”), photographed in 2012.

Line diagrams show station names set on an angle.

Intercom system, 2019.

Trilingual sign; in Basque, Spanish, and English. Key info is also provided in Braille.

On this district plan, the English text is set in Rotis SemiSerif, which appears to be an exception.

Cover of a brochure with general contracting conditions, 2019.

“Masks with valves are not allowed”, 2020.

Sopelako dorrea / Torre de Sopela, 1999.