notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Here’s a fun ngram: an OCR glitch that tracks the rise of Helvetica. books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c…

— Benjamin Schmidt (@benmschmidt) November 29, 2012

Edited slightly to go from 1940 to 2000, instead of the default 1800 to 2008.

Reconstruction of square US standard road sign lettering (1927) by Eric Fischer on Flickr:

Overlaying the 1952 Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs with as many characters from the earlier square-letter standard as I could find in sample signs from pre-1942 editions of the MUTCD, mostly from the 1927 Rural Sign Manual. The real standards for these characters, never published in book form, probably still exist in a dusty file cabinet in some public works department office.

I was not able to find any square letters from Series A, only a few digits. The 1935 MUTCD specifies “Soft Shoulders” to be in Series A, but the image of the sign appears to be in Series B. I didn’t find Q or 9 in any series.

In general the metrics of the square characters closely match those of their rounded successors, much as Clearview has tried to do. The exception is W, which was approximately a series narrower in the square letters.

The Series B period (from 7 A.M.) seems to be round and the Series C period (from St. Louis) square, for no obvious reason.

Showcased Work: Typefaces of the World Poster.

It’s pretty, but since when did “the World” mean “Western Europe and the United States”?

I have no idea where this came from originally; it seems to have shuttled around the ffffound/tumblr/imageblog ecosystem for ages, although I think the earliest post on Tumblr was by ahole. Anyway, it’s a power of two on a train with interesting (if not entirely to my taste) typography, so here it is.

A Google Books chart showing the decline of the medial S, the ſ you see in old inscriptions. Chart via Robin Sloan. Chart concept by Ben Schmidt. Seen in Rest In Peace, Medial S by Frank Chimero.

See also: Congrefs, by Mark Wunch, which restores the long S (via).

Previously: Go About Your Buſineſs. (See also.)

Design Museum Shop: Type Trumps. Lovely. via psd.

Front Of New York World’s Fair Guide (via glen.h)

Creative Review on London’s 7/7 memorial, and in particular its typography. (See also.)