Talk:Johnston (typeface)

Most popular typeface ?
I've pulled the following from the article, until somebody can produce verification:


 * Recently, many magazines have stated that Johnston is the most common typeface in the world beating out Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier.

Gill Sans may qualify as one of the most used typefaces of the 20th century, but until very recently Johnston has been exclusive to London Transport. Jheald 13:44, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I wish I knew where the article regarding Johnston being the most common typeface, however I know that The Toronto Star did mention this, and it was brought up in my Graphic Design class. I will try and find a source. I too found it VERY hard to beleive but this is what I've read.

Used in "House" ?
An anon has just added that:


 * It has been used in House as the standard font for virtually all on-screen text, including credits and the signs inside the hospital.

I haven't seen the show, but I'm pulling this because I don't believe it's true, at least not based on the logo. At the very least the "U" and the "S" and the "E" are too narrow compared to the "O", and the middle bar of the "E" is too long.

Do others agree? Jheald 08:56, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Sample shows Gill Sans?
"Features of the font are the perfect circle of the letter O and the use of a diamond-shaped dot above minuscule letters i and j and for the full stop. Commas, apostrophes and other punctuation marks are also based on the diamond-shaped dot." however the sample shown uses Gill Sans-style squares. Resag (talk) 02:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like a diamond shaped dot over the small case "i" to me. Looking at the ITC Johnston page linked, their full stop is not diamond shaped; but the dot is diamond shaped in the question mark and exclamation mark.  The P22 full stop is also square (I think), though it's a little harder to find. Jheald (talk) 14:01, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Sherlock usage?
Should it be added that this is the font used for BBC's Sherlock? 108.65.189.25 (talk) 07:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

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Eiichi Kono's comments on Johnston
Mr. Kono, who redesigned Johnston in the 1970s, has kindly edited this article to provide some comments. Unfortunately, they are not sourced and so I fear that they're likely to be removed. So I've copied all his text here so that it will survive even if the article gets edited: Rather than simply producing a phototype of the original design, Johnston was redesigned in 1979 by Eiichi Kono at Banks & Miles to produce New Johnston. The new family comes in eight members: Light, Medium, Bold weights with corresponding Italics, Medium Condensed and Bold Condensed (the old family had only two weights: Regular and Bold, and the latter had no lowercase letters). After all precisely hand-drawn letters (nearly 1,000) were completed and sent to AlphaType for digitisation in the USA in 1981-82, New Johnston finally became ready for Linotron photo-typesetting machine, and first appeared in London's Underground stations in 1983. It is the official typeface exclusively used by Transport for London and The Mayor of London ever since. The New Johnston Medium as the new standard is slightly heavier or bolder than the original Johnston Regular (or sometimes confusingly called Medium) and lighter than the original Bold, and has a larger x-height, made suitable for main text setting as well as large display sizes. The average x-height of the New Johnston is roughly 7% larger than the original as the limit for keeping the original Johnston flavour, which was fundamental. The larger x-height allowed larger counters, and type size (size of x-height in particular) and weight are reciprocal factors for legibility, but enlarging x-height can affect style and appearance. Since the original Johnston weights, Regular and Bold, were maintained as closely as possible, inevitably New Johnston Medium appears very close to Light and Bold. This is the whole point of this particular solution because New Johnston Medium works as the one-fits-all standard font for virtually every application from large type sizes for posters and signs to minute type sizes for pocket map maintaining much improved legibility. Punctuation marks are matched the diamond tittle, differing from Johnston's original design, enhancing the identity of London Transport In 1990-1992 Banks and Miles, in partnership with Signus Limited digitised the first PostScript Type 1 fonts for the then London Transport under the auspices of the Corporate Design Manager, Roger Hughes. Hughes and Jeremy Rewse-Davies, LT's Design Director, also commissioned New Johnston Book, a special weight with distinctive modifications to allow better representation on low-resolution laser printers. The New Johnston Book weight was designed specifically for high volume publications and its usage was intended to be restricted to sizes below 12pt. In 2002 the typeface was digitized on behalf of Transport for London by Agfa Monotype Corporation, with the addition of two further weights, Book and Book Bold, and as well as corresponding italic variants. The revised font family – not commercially available – is known as 'New Johnston TfL'. In the early stages of digitisation, there was the chronic problem in letter-spacing, which seems to be solved more or less by now. ...New Johnston’s numerals are originally designed to fit for setting tabular matters, which was requested by TfL. Hope this is helpful to anyone reading. Blythwood (talk) 22:09, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified
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