Is there an official set of FHWA Series fonts?

[Quillz]

I know that most of you here are probably using the Roadgeek 2005 fonts, which were made by a self-proclaimed road geek. But those are unofficial. My question is, is there actually a definitive set of the FHWA Series fonts that is actually approved for use on real highway signs? I've come across this, for example. But I myself use the Saa series of fonts, which appear to be a carbon copy of Roadgeek/FHWA 2000 but also includes the long discontinued Series A. (And I've read that Saa is used on license plates.)

I know that the FHWA Series are not copyrightable being a work of the US govt, so is any copy of the fonts acceptable for use on real signs?

[deathtopumpkins]

Considering the number of atrocious fonts I've seen on signs, I would think the Roadgeek fonts would do just fine. 

[Quillz]

But, are those fonts actually used on real signs? Because even though I've seen the MUTCD, it never seems to include the actual fonts for use, making me think that any set of FHWA-like fonts are fine so long as they are more or less compliant with the guidelines.

[Scott5114]

I believe there is an "official" set of fonts that the DOTs use for creating signs, but it is only marginally better (i.e. you pretty much have to zoom in 4000x to see a difference) than the Roadgeek fonts. Michael Adams did an outstanding job on them. As far as I know, the "official" fonts are not freely available on the Web.

The official Clearview fonts cost on the order of $700 per typeface, I believe.

[Quillz]

I believe there is an "official" set of fonts that the DOTs use for creating signs, but it is only marginally better (i.e. you pretty much have to zoom in 4000x to see a difference) than the Roadgeek fonts. Michael Adams did an outstanding job on them. As far as I know, the "official" fonts are not freely available on the Web.

The official Clearview fonts cost on the order of $700 per typeface, I believe.

$800 for the entire set, all 13 weights.

[Scott5114]

...

[NJRoadfan]

Perhaps others can key in here, but I recall US copyright doesn't actually extend to typefaces. (source: http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm ) You can (in theory) easily trace and copy fonts and not have to worry about it. The whole Clearview costing $800 and requiring a license is BS to begin with. Being that its used for public sector projects, it should be in the public domain like the FHWA series fonts are.

[Quillz]

Then why do some sites charge for the FHWA series fonts? Just because they do the tracing for you?

[Scott5114]

You can copyright a font file. You cannot copyright the actual typeface design. This is why you can often find cheap knockoffs of respectable fonts under another name (see Chancery Cursive/Zapf Chancery/URW Chancery L/Monotype Corsiva/whatever)

[J N Winkler]

Then why do some sites charge for the FHWA series fonts? Just because they do the tracing for you?

Erm, no.  The vendors of the "pay" versions are selling more than just tracing services.  They are also selling economy in use of curve nodes in the glyphs, which is helpful with sign-cutting equipment, as well as kerning in accordance with published standards either through the use of letter tiles with the correct widths and character offsets or through kerning pairs.  In the case of the FHWA alphabet series, fonts tend to be cheap because dimensioned drawings for the glyphs for all of the alphabet series, including Series A but excluding Series E Modified/Lowercase, have been around since 1945, along with published spacing tables.  You can therefore draw the letters from scratch (without having to trace them) and you can also program the kerning pairs yourself.

The Clearview fonts are expensive even though the typefaces themselves are in the public domain, which was a condition of FHWA granting interim approval for the use of Clearview.  The designers of Clearview have been very canny by refraining from publishing dimensioned drawings of the Clearview glyphs and also by providing images of the glyphs themselves only as low-resolution rasters in the Clearview type supplement which you can download from the FHWA MUTCD site.  This means that potential competitors wishing to produce their own Clearview fonts are stuck trying to reverse-engineer vector drawings which use the Clearview fonts, which puts them at risk of civil damages or criminal prosecution for copyright infringement, or cleaning up all the spurious nodes which result from a trace job on low-resolution rasters.  The Clearview designers have put the typefaces in the public domain, but that does not oblige them to facilitate duplication by others.  By charging $800 for the fonts they are essentially milking a first-mover advantage.

The Roadgeek fonts are quite close to the real typefaces and are excellent for producing sign drawings which are presented as low-resolution rasters on this website.  However, they have certain limitations.  Because the Roadgeek Clearview fonts were produced from the Clearview typeface supplement, the glyphs have all kinds of kinks and bends which are visible at high zoom.  The Roadgeek FHWA Series fonts do not suffer from this problem (Michael Adams has always said he produced them by dumping the SHS typeface drawings to raster at very high resolution and then autotracing the results, but as far as I can tell he might as well have copied the drawings directly), but I suspect the kerning of being wrong to some degree for all of the alphabet series other than Series E Modified.

[J N Winkler]

I believe there is an "official" set of fonts that the DOTs use for creating signs, but it is only marginally better (i.e. you pretty much have to zoom in 4000x to see a difference) than the Roadgeek fonts. Michael Adams did an outstanding job on them. As far as I know, the "official" fonts are not freely available on the Web.

My understanding is that MUTCD art is produced in CorelDRAW (which I also use, though probably not in the same version) using URW America's FHWA series fonts.  However, preparing art for the MUTCD is not the same as cutting signs to be installed in the field.  For the latter I suspect the fonts come with sign cutting software, which may in turn be linked to the sign design package used by the state DOT/consultant/sign shop.  Vendors like SignCAD have software offerings which support integrated sign design and manufacturing--you can draw the sign in SignCAD, for example, and then feed the result into SignCAD's sign-cutting product.

I suspect a lot of vendors of sign design software of deliberately distorting some glyphs as a defense against unintelligent copyright infringement.  For example, the "S" in Series D in SignCAD looks like a squashed fruit.  Pixymbols also has a version of the FHWA alphabet series where the "5" in Series E Modified is wrong, wrong, wrong but happens to match the frame outline of "5" as produced by a major button-copy manufacturer (Stimsonite?).  In contradistinction, the Roadgeek series shoot straight where glyphs are concerned.

[Quillz]

I guess as a follow up to this, I actually called up the FHWA.org website today to see if they would actually sell to individuals, and they told me they don't. They redirected me to the CA reseller and was told, after some initial confusion, that I can only buy that complete font package if I'm affiliated with some kind of government. I don't know why this would be the case, being that I specifically told them I was using the fonts only for personal reasons, not to fabricate signs or something.

In the end, I'll probably just try these "Roadgeek" fonts. I am currently using Saa, which I incorrectly stated to be a copy of the FHWA Series. It's actually supposed to be a copy of license plate fonts, which are extremely similar, but not nearly the same. I've noted that Series B, for example, looks quite different with certain numerals.

EDIT: It was also noted earlier that the kerning for all series other than E(M) might be wrong, but can't kerning be adjusted manually in any editing software, such as Illustrator? I've always been able to adjust it, so wouldn't one just match it to some official specifications?

[J N Winkler]

EDIT: It was also noted earlier that the kerning for all series other than E(M) might be wrong, but can't kerning be adjusted manually in any editing software, such as Illustrator? I've always been able to adjust it, so wouldn't one just match it to some official specifications?

I said earlier on that the kerning in the Roadgeek series other than E Modified was so tight as to be possibly incorrect, but I later compared the tile widths in Roadgeek Series D with those specified in the 2004 SHS book, and found the match to be close if not exact.  For this reason I now think the Roadgeek series are more or less on spec.  I think it is possible FHWA adopted closer intercharacter spacing for the FHWA alphabet series in the 2004 SHS, but I have not attempted to verify this by performing a comparison of the 2004 SHS tables with those given in the last (paper) edition of Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs.

[aswnl]

I have the official Dutch versions of the series E(M), D and C, which are called RWS-Ee, Dd and Cc.
However they do have some visible differences to the American original.

[agentsteel53]

I like the thin-stroke C.  I swear I've seen it in Kentucky.

Can you email me that font please?  jake@aaroads.com

[Quillz]

I have the official Dutch versions of the series E(M), D and C, which are called RWS-Ee, Dd and Cc.
However they do have some visible differences to the American original.

Would you mind e-mailing me a copy of these fonts? I'd like to compare it to both the Roadgeek and Saa fonts that I already have.

[Truvelo]

Regarding the Clearview fonts and the errors the unofficial fonts contain wouldn't an easy way of getting accurate shaped characters be to go up to a sign and take pictures of each letter?

[Quillz]

Perhaps. I do have the "official" ClearviewHwy fonts, though, if anyone wants a copy. It cost money but apparently fonts in the US can't be copyrighted, so I don't have any issues sharing it with anyone who wants it.

[agentsteel53]

the font itself cannot be copyrighted, but the exact binary implementation can. 

if you have a font description (radii and lengths or whatnot) then you can code it up yourself, make a TTF file, and copyright that.

it's a pretty absurd law, but if laws weren't absurd, lawyers would go out of business, and we can't have that.

[Quillz]

Yes, I think that's what ClearviewHwy is: It's already been optimized for sign usage by having default kerning, tracking, etc. values. From what I've read elsewhere, the font characters in of themselves are not copyrightable, but the whole typeface collection is because of some of the optimization work that was done on it.

[Quillz]

Thanks for sending the font samples that you did. But I'm curious... Are the Ccx and Ddx fonts intended to be roughly equivalent to a C(M) and D(M)? Because I did find that both were slightly thicker than just Cc and Dd.

[aswnl]

Ee and Cc are meant for use as white characters on a darker (blue/green) background.
Eex and Ccx are designed for use as black characters on a light (white/yellow) background (for better legibility).

[Quillz]

Oh, okay, so then it's roughly equivalent to the Clearview -B and -W typefaces. Thanks for the info.

[bulldog1979]

Just to elaborate on what's been said above. There is a difference, typographically speaking, between a font and a typeface. Times would be a typeface. Times Roman 12 point is a font, as a font specifies style (Roman vs. bold or italics) and a size of a particular typeface.

Under US copyright law, a font file on your computer though is considered software and subject to copyright. A typeface is not copyrightable though. When we've created marker graphics for wikipedia in SVG (vector) format, once we convert the type to paths, the work of the copyrightable software is done, leaving just shapes. It doesn't matter if I use Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator, the result has no more copyright claim to it in the final product.

[Quillz]

I came across a thread on a board similar to this one that was more or less asking the same question that I did, and, apparently, someone looked at the metadata on the most recent copy of the FHWA Series Fonts manuals and deduced that the manual was actually using the Saa fonts all along, which I found surprising, since the Saa take on Series B doesn't look to be correct (at least compared to the Roadgeek fonts.)

I have Saa, which does appear to (mostly) conform to the 2000 spec. fonts, although it also has a Series A as well, which I believe was retired in 1961.