Street Blade Signs Changing (All Uppercase > Mixed Case)?

[blawp]

Wanna see a readable font? Take a look at the blades in Thousand Oaks or Santa Barbara.

[mjb2002]

Wanna see a readable font? Take a look at the blades in Thousand Oaks or Santa Barbara.

Most Sans Serif fonts are readable. The only ones that I have known to be unreadable on street name signs are as follows:

Aharoni
The AR Font Series
Bauhaus 93
Berlin Series
Brittanic
Broadway
Brush Script
Calibri
Candara
Chiller
Comic Sans
Consolas
Courier
Curlz
Edwardian Script
FixedSys
Forte
Franklin Gothic
Freestyle Script
French Script
Gabriola
Gigi
Gill Sans
Harlow Solid
Harrington
Jokerman
Kristen ITC
Kunstler Script
Lucida Handwriting
Magneto
Maiandra
Matisse
Matura MT Script
Mistral
Papyrus
Pristina
Rage
Script
Segoe (except Segoe UI)
Showcard Gothic
Small Fonts
System
Tempus Sans ITC
Trebuchet
Viner Hand ITC
Vivaldi
Vladimir Script

That is the list I was able to come up with based on a number of factors.

I have no problem with Arial or Helvetica - as long as the letters are in the proper format, i.e. mixed case.

[Scott5114]

There are of course far more typefaces in the world than come with your copy of Windows.

We can debate the merits of various typefaces but the fact of the matter is, in the eyes of FHWA, every font in the world is going to be on that list except for FHWA Series and Clearview.

[Alps]

There are of course far more typefaces in the world than come with your copy of Windows.

We can debate the merits of various typefaces but the fact of the matter is, in the eyes of FHWA, every font in the world is going to be on that list except for FHWA Series and Clearview.

And Clarendon, if you're another Federal agency.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

Monterey Clarendon, all-caps street blades:

[bulkyorled]

I'm thinking Monterey County is a fan of Clarendon

[CentralCAroadgeek]

I'm thinking Monterey County is a fan of Clarendon

Not sure about southern Monterey County, but it definitely is true up north, especially here in Salinas.

[mjb2002]

Monterey Clarendon, all-caps street blades:

Decent, for an all uppercase Street Name sign. There are some fonts that should never be in mixed-case EXCEPT on newspapers and other print media. Clarendon is one such font.

[Scott5114]

What's wrong with mixed case Clarendon?

[CentralCAroadgeek]

What's wrong with mixed case Clarendon?

It just looks plain ugly, even more in how it's posted here in Salinas (As I've covered before)

[Scott5114]

From what I've seen of your pics, a lot of the Clarendon in Salinas is horizontally squished or otherwise misapplied (barring the fact that it really shouldn't be on road signs anyway). It's not that bad when someone isn't doing awful things to it.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

I've never really noticed Clarendon outside my area (i.e. national parks), so I don't know what "correct" Clarendon is.

[Scott5114]

[CentralCAroadgeek]

How about a sign for visualization? (Sorry)

[Central Avenue]

From Wikipedia's Clarendon article:



It's a US National Park Service sign, if you're wondering. Clarendon was their standard typeface for many years, though now they use Rawlinson instead.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

That doesn't look pretty bad... Now just show that picture to whoever designs the signs here in Salinas so they can get a sense of what Clarendon should look like...

[bulkyorled]

It's amazing they've not put Clarendon on their illuminated signs. I wouldn't put it past them to replace them with reflective ones with Clarendon.... 

[CentralCAroadgeek]

Oh there ARE reflective street name signs in Clarendon, though I don't recall any being illuminated (Thankfully). Here, it's just Highway Gothic and some Clearview mixed in.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

The City of Benicia uses an uppercase Helvetica/Arial on their street blades:


In Washington, the City of Bremerton uses this distinctive mixed-case font on their street blades:

[Scott5114]

^Futura Condensed.

[mjb2002]

The City of Benicia uses an uppercase Helvetica/Arial on their street blades:

I gotta tell ya, Helvetica does NOT look attractive at all when the sign is composed of all uppercase letters. I should know - about 93% of the signs Barnwell County installed from Thanksgiving Day 1997 to November 30, 2011 are all uppercase lettered Helvetica. They just replaced some of those signs, including at the east end of my grandmother's street, but primarily in the areas where the signposts fail crashworthy compliance AND where the signs fail minimum the letter height compliance (NOTE: I just found out that they actually have the minimum letter height standards listed in Section 2D.06, paragraph 3; which is why the FHWA eliminated the January 9 deadline for Street Name signs upgrades).

[Brian556]

Lewisville, Tx's new style. I do not like it.

[agentsteel53]

the vertical positioning is wrong on at least one of those blades.

[Central Avenue]

the vertical positioning is wrong on at least one of those blades.

I've noticed that a lot on mixed-case signs...the designers shove the lettering upwards as a shortcut to make room for the descenders, rather than just making the sign a bit taller and centering the lettering properly.

[Roadsguy]

the vertical positioning is wrong on at least one of those blades.

I've noticed that a lot on mixed-case signs...the designers shove the lettering upwards as a shortcut to make room for the descenders, rather than just making the sign a bit taller and centering the lettering properly.

Well, there's that, and then there's Bensalem's attempt to fit in a lowercase Y at this intersection of Park Ave. and Valley Meadows Dr. They shoved the lowercase (Clearview ) Y upwards to fit it in, and it looks horrible. (Street view is outdated and I don't have a picture.)