Transport New

K-Type TRANSPORT NEW has been improved and expanded:
• Numerous outline and spacing refinements
• Full complement of Latin Extended-A characters
• Additional Italic fonts for all three weights

K-Type’s redrawing of the UK Transport font originally designed for British road signs by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert beginning in 1957 and first published on the Preston bypass in 1958.

In addition to the familiar Heavy and Medium weights, Transport New revives the previously unreleased Light weight font, originally planned for back-lit signage but never actually applied.

The starting point for the typeface was Akzidenz Grotesk, the prototype modern sans which also provided a model for Helvetica and Univers. Some features were imported from Johnston’s Underground type – the curled foot of the lowercase L and the pointed middle of the uppercase M for instance. Designed to eliminate confusion between characters and increase legibility, they also help to give Transport a British flavour.

The original Transport font has subtle eccentricities which add to its distinctiveness, and drawing the New version has involved walking an impertinent tightrope between eliminating awkwardness and maintaining quirkiness. Transport New wouldn’t be the first typeface to have overstepped the mark and gone bland.

So, K-Type’s version includes cheeky but delicate refinements - shortening the uncomfortably close terminals of characters such as 5, 6, C, G, and e, tucking in the protruding lower terminals of S and s, improving proportions by narrowing overly wide glyphs like the number 4, and slightly opening up some claustrophobic counters. The question mark is made nicer, and parentheses are less chunky – slimmer than letters and numbers. The x height is edged fractionally even taller. New characters such as the Euro symbol have been added, along with many accented characters for Welsh and continental European use.