A CON 2010
ClearviewHwy Typeface
ClearviewHwy® typeface. Donald Meeker (American, b. 1947) and Christopher O’Hara (American, b. 1968) and Jeffery Smith (American, b. 1964), Meeker & Associates, James Montalbano (American, b. 1953), Terminal Design Inc. Human-factors research: Philip Garvey and Martin Pietrucha, The Larson Transportation Institute at Pennsylvania State University, and Susan T. Chrysler, Texas Transportation Institute. United States, 2004–present.
Few people slow down to consider the design of road signs, yet most of us interact with them every day. Since the 1940s, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration has used a standard typeface, commonly known as Highway Gothic. Graphic designer Donald Meeker, working with typeface designer James Montalbano and a team of human factors scientists and other experts, have spent over fifteen years trying to replace Highway Gothic with something better. Approaching the project with passion and zeal, they have struggled against a far-flung and recalcitrant bureaucracy.
What’s wrong with Highway Gothic? The open spaces in the characters, such as the bowl of the lowercase “a,” are too small, making the letters hard to read, especially at night, when headlights hit the reflective surface of the sign and make the text blurry. This effect, called halation, causes the cramped open spaces in Highway Gothic to look even smaller, making it difficult for drivers—especially older drivers to distinguish among different letterforms. Making the letters bigger to accommodate older drivers would address the problem, but it would also mean manufacturing larger signs. Bigger signs would generate more visual clutter as well as enormous infrastructure costs.
Meeker and Montalbano created Clearview, a set of elegant, readable letterforms optimized for distance reading. The characters have enlarged counters, yet occupy no more space than Highway Gothic. After dozens of iterations and rigorous testing, Clearview received interim approval from the FHWA in 2004, and over twenty states are now using it for various applications. The struggle to transform the nation’s signage, however, is far from over. The designers are now testing characters for use in darkon- light conditions and developing a proportional grid system for creating more consistent, logically arranged signs. They released road sign versions of Clearview in Cyrllic, Greek, and extended Latin in 2009.
A new design for more legible road signs from the museum's National Triennial Exhibition, Why Design Now?
ClearviewHwy Typeface
ClearviewHwy® typeface. Donald Meeker (American, b. 1947) and Christopher O’Hara (American, b. 1968) and Jeffery Smith (American, b. 1964), Meeker & Associates, James Montalbano (American, b. 1953), Terminal Design Inc. Human-factors research: Philip Garvey and Martin Pietrucha, The Larson Transportation Institute at Pennsylvania State University, and Susan T. Chrysler, Texas Transportation Institute. United States, 2004–present.
Few people slow down to consider the design of road signs, yet most of us interact with them every day. Since the 1940s, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration has used a standard typeface, commonly known as Highway Gothic. Graphic designer Donald Meeker, working with typeface designer James Montalbano and a team of human factors scientists and other experts, have spent over fifteen years trying to replace Highway Gothic with something better. Approaching the project with passion and zeal, they have struggled against a far-flung and recalcitrant bureaucracy.
What’s wrong with Highway Gothic? The open spaces in the characters, such as the bowl of the lowercase “a,” are too small, making the letters hard to read, especially at night, when headlights hit the reflective surface of the sign and make the text blurry. This effect, called halation, causes the cramped open spaces in Highway Gothic to look even smaller, making it difficult for drivers—especially older drivers to distinguish among different letterforms. Making the letters bigger to accommodate older drivers would address the problem, but it would also mean manufacturing larger signs. Bigger signs would generate more visual clutter as well as enormous infrastructure costs.
Meeker and Montalbano created Clearview, a set of elegant, readable letterforms optimized for distance reading. The characters have enlarged counters, yet occupy no more space than Highway Gothic. After dozens of iterations and rigorous testing, Clearview received interim approval from the FHWA in 2004, and over twenty states are now using it for various applications. The struggle to transform the nation’s signage, however, is far from over. The designers are now testing characters for use in darkon- light conditions and developing a proportional grid system for creating more consistent, logically arranged signs. They released road sign versions of Clearview in Cyrllic, Greek, and extended Latin in 2009.
A new design for more legible road signs from the museum's National Triennial Exhibition, Why Design Now?