Updated since its previous iteration in 2023, the design of this text-heavy website remains centred primarily on its typography. This time it takes cues from book design, asking how the functional design elements that make up a book page might be translated into a webpage without simply mimicking a different format.

Tid by Letters from Sweden is used as the primary typeface. It allows for easy reading as well as effortless skimming, particularly considering the website frequently carries long form content. Uniform letter widths across weights in Tid allow for not only predictable design with dynamic layout changes (via the menu) but also a justified setting (pictured) for readers who might prefer it. Justification also indents paragraphs instead of adding spaces between them.

Tid is used in its Display optical sizing for drop caps and pull quotes.

Side notes for essays are implemented next to the main body copy on wide screens and interspersed beneath paragraphs on mobile. These along with all UI elements, like the menu, are set in New Transport by A2-TYPE, including, in some cases, entire pages e.g. the ‘Index’ page and reading list (both pictured separately).

The use of Söhne Mono introduces a playful element to the website’s Guestbook (pictured) where it is used on sticky notes that carry messages from the website’s visitors.

Tid is the primary typeface with New Transport accompanying it. Tid is used in its Display optical size for drop caps.

The letter widths of Tid are forgiving enough to allow for a properly readable justified setting which is offered optionally to readers.

The index page is set primarily in New Transport.

Söhne Mono Buch is used on sticky notes on the Guestbook to add a playful element.

Tid is used in its Display optical sizing for pull quotes.

The dark mode uses an alternate accent colour.

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of which had remained largely unchanged after its nationalisation in 1948, a reflection of a largely disjointed and out-of-date transport system.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

In 2023, Hauser & Wirth Gallery is presenting a few artists for the Paris + by Art Basel exhibition.

Noam Benatar and Christian Knöpfel developed the graphic design for a series of short films presenting the exhibited artists. Selva Script is coupled with Antique Olive, creating a nice contrast. The website uses New Transport throughout.

In Rainbows, 2007 [More info on Discogs]

Radiohead's In Rainbows album artwork was created and designed by their long-time collaborator Stanley Donwood. It was released in October 2007 and makes all-caps use of Transport, a font designed for road signs in the UK, later digitised by URW Type Foundry. The artwork is co-credited to Dr Tchok, a pseudonym used by Thom Yorke.

For In Rainbows Disk 2, released one year later, again Transport has been in use. This time in use as bold, instead of medium style.

In Rainbows Disk 2, 2008 [More info on Discogs]

Reenvolver is a company that aims to support production chains and add value to Brazilian socio-biodiversity products. Its purpose is to seek out forgotten foods and traditional farming systems and bring them to gastronomy, building bridges that reconnects territories and palates.

The identity pairs New Transport (A2-TYPE) with Blackletra’s Silva Display.

The title in set in Stephenson Blake’s Condensed Sans Serif No. 7 , see Condensed & Elongated Sans Serifs, with ample letterspacing. The bold caps used for “Automobile Association” could be from Miller & Richard’s Grotesque No. 3, see Sans-Serifs & Grotesques (Miller & Richard). A decade later, these classic British grotesques would have made room for so-called neo-grotesks like Helvetica, Univers, etc.

“Never before have motorists in Britian had the opportunity of travelling at relatively high speeds for a long period” begins this folder issued by the AA, one of the UK’s motorists organisations, in late 1959 when this was issued. One has to say that the London-centric organisation can’t have been unaware that the country’s first Motorway standard road, the Preston By-pass, part of the M6 had been opened the year before!

Anyhow, this folder describes not just the route of the core section of the M1 that would open to great fanfare on 1 November 1959, but explains what the motorist would encounter and how to use this new style of road with a ‘Motorway Code’ of driving. It also explains how unaccustomed not just the driver but the vehicle itself may prove to ‘long periods of high speed’ that would not have been possible before on the UK's trunk road network.

The cover to the brochure is quite ‘American’ in style, echoing the modernity of freeways I suspect, and includes the old AA logo along with the then long established headquarters in London’s Leicester Square of Fanum House.

The exemplary signs reproduced at the left show Transport in indirect use. The new typeface for road signs in the UK was designed between 1957 and 1963 by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. The text is set in Times New Roman.