U8 Hermannstraße and Boddinstraße subway stations

Hermannstraße station with a standard sign in FF Transit, the corporate typeface of the BVG as introduced by MetaDesign in the 1990s (left), and the new retro signage in U8.

The U8 typeface by Fatype is a revival of the old lettered signs found on subway stations in Berlin:

Anton [Koovit] started U8 as a research project about the Berlin subway system signage and particularly the U8 line that connects the northern borough of Reinickendorf with Neukölln in the south of the city, through the Alexanderplatz junction. His goals were to restore a piece of history, research a link between the DIN and Bauhaus, and translate the lettering of individual handcrafted station signage into a formal typeface.

Released in 2013, U8 soon after has come full circle: The digital reincarnation is used for the signs in two renovated stations of the U8 line, Hermannstraße (2013) and Boddinstraße (2014), designed by Barbara Dechant of the local Buchstabenmuseum. Leinestraße was renovated, too, but there, the new signs apparently are manual recreations based on the original, with less refined curves than in Fatype’s U8 typeface.

Read more about the revival project on Anton Koovit’s website. For more info about the renovation of the U8 line, see the article “Neue Wege im Dauerkampf gegen Graffiti-Schmierer” in Berliner Morgenpost from 11 November 2014.

Boddinstraße station in 2008 (left) and in February 2016 (right). The former features a different (intermediate?) style, bolder in weight and with a monocular ‘a’. Here’s an image of an older sign with the letterforms that presented the model for the U8 typeface.