Richard J. wrote:

As you say, the apostrophe has a circular ball at the top, but the dot
under the T of "ST." is square. Also, several letters are narrower than
Johnston, and the E and K have subtly different proportions. Looks like an
amateur attempt to copy Johnston. I wonder why.

Because the real thing was hard to get hold of?

I've heard of one such font called SubwayLondon. Could it be that?

Aidan Stanger wrote:
Richard J. wrote:

As you say, the apostrophe has a circular ball at the top, but the
dot under the T of "ST." is square. Also, several letters are
narrower than Johnston, and the E and K have subtly different
proportions. Looks like an amateur attempt to copy Johnston. I
wonder why.

Because the real thing was hard to get hold of?

Surely not at LU's HQ station?

I've heard of one such font called SubwayLondon. Could it be that?

I haven't managed to find a full character set of SubwayLondon. The name
suggests it's an unofficial American clone of Johnston.

I think it's more likely that the sign was put up in the 1970's when LU
were starting to redesign Johnston. It might contain some experimental
variations that were not adopted for New Johnston.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:11:23 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:

I think it's more likely that the sign was put up in the 1970's when LU
were starting to redesign Johnston. It might contain some experimental
variations that were not adopted for New Johnston.

Whilst on the subject of New Johnston I'm surprised that nobody
has mentioned alternative characters, or at least dots.

Compare pages 4 and 7 of the Fares for 2004 leaflet. On the
Carnet advert the full stops and the dots on the "i"s do not
have straight sides; on the Oyster ad they do.

Roger wrote the following in:
ildram.co.uk

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:11:23 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:

I think it's more likely that the sign was put up in the 1970's
when LU were starting to redesign Johnston. It might contain some
experimental variations that were not adopted for New Johnston.

Whilst on the subject of New Johnston I'm surprised that nobody
has mentioned alternative characters, or at least dots.

Compare pages 4 and 7 of the Fares for 2004 leaflet. On the
Carnet advert the full stops and the dots on the "i"s do not
have straight sides; on the Oyster ad they do.

Ah yes. What is this typeface with the slightly concave sides on the
dots? Is it Johnston, or some dodgy copy?

--
message by Robin May, but you can call me Mr Smith.
Enjoy the Routemaster while you still can.

"Handlebar catch and nipple."

In message , Robin May
writes

Roger wrote the following in:
news:lhtguvomgr0s2prih3vfb83li79afpu8cu@utgarthr. nildram.co.uk

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:11:23 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:

Compare pages 4 and 7 of the Fares for 2004 leaflet. On the
Carnet advert the full stops and the dots on the "i"s do not
have straight sides; on the Oyster ad they do.

Ah yes. What is this typeface with the slightly concave sides on the
dots? Is it Johnston, or some dodgy copy?

Looking at the document in the full version of Acrobat (which identifies
embedded fonts) it seems that it uses a version of New Johnston made for
TFL, as the font name is NJTFL - it is used in four versions:

NJTFL-Book, which has the concave dots and is used for body text.
NJTFL-Medium, straight-sided dots (used for lighter headings).
NJTFL-Bold, straight-sided dots (used for stronger headings).
NJTFL-BookBold, concave dots (used for bold in tables).

The illustrations on pages 4 and 7, mentioned by Richard, are scanned
images but the originals were presumably produced using these variant
versions of Bold and BookBold respectively.

There is an illustration of the NJTFL-Medium character set (with some
other information about TFL signage typography) in TFL's document on
sign standards for River Services:

http://www.transportforlondon.gov.uk...nsStandard.pdf

--
Paul Terry

"Paul Terry" wrote in message
...

NJTFL-Book, which has the concave dots and is used for body text.
NJTFL-Medium, straight-sided dots (used for lighter headings).
NJTFL-Bold, straight-sided dots (used for stronger headings).
NJTFL-BookBold, concave dots (used for bold in tables).

The fonts seem to all use complicated 'g's... didn't New Johnston use simple
'g's?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

In message , John Rowland
writes
"Paul Terry" wrote in message
...

NJTFL-Book, which has the concave dots and is used for body text.
NJTFL-Medium, straight-sided dots (used for lighter headings).
NJTFL-Bold, straight-sided dots (used for stronger headings).
NJTFL-BookBold, concave dots (used for bold in tables).

The fonts seem to all use complicated 'g's... didn't New Johnston use simple
'g's?

No.
--
Kat "A world without string is chaos"

Paul Terry wrote:
In message , Robin
May writes

Roger wrote the following in:
ildram.co.uk

Compare pages 4 and 7 of the Fares for 2004 leaflet. On the
Carnet advert the full stops and the dots on the "i"s do not
have straight sides; on the Oyster ad they do.

Ah yes. What is this typeface with the slightly concave sides on
the dots? Is it Johnston, or some dodgy copy?

Looking at the document in the full version of Acrobat (which
identifies embedded fonts) it seems that it uses a version of New
Johnston made for TFL, as the font name is NJTFL - it is used in
four versions:

NJTFL-Book, which has the concave dots and is used for body text.
NJTFL-Medium, straight-sided dots (used for lighter headings).
NJTFL-Bold, straight-sided dots (used for stronger headings).
NJTFL-BookBold, concave dots (used for bold in tables).

Thanks for this, Paul.


I've now found the LU Desktop Publishing standards, at
http://www.transportforlondon.gov.uk...Publishing.pdf
which say that New Johnston Book "has been designed specifically for
clarity and legibility at 12pt or below. It should not be used larger than
this. At sizes above 12pt, New Johnston Light should be used instead."

The only reason that the concave dots are visible in the Carnet advert on
page 7 is that an original image in New Johnston Book, probably 12pt, has
been enlarged as a graphic to about 36pt. This is a violation of the
publishing standards.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Roger wrote:
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:11:23 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:

I think it's more likely that the sign was put up in the 1970's when
LU were starting to redesign Johnston. It might contain some
experimental variations that were not adopted for New Johnston.

Whilst on the subject of New Johnston I'm surprised that nobody
has mentioned alternative characters, or at least dots.

Compare pages 4 and 7 of the Fares for 2004 leaflet. On the
Carnet advert the full stops and the dots on the "i"s do not
have straight sides; on the Oyster ad they do.

Well spotted! The dots on the Carnet advert have concave sides. This
appears to be a feature of the lighter weights of the typeface ("Book" and
"Light") whereas the heavier weights ("Medium" and "Bold") have retained
the straight-sided diamonds. If you download the Acrobat version of the
leaflet from
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/common/downloa...es-revised.pdf
and set the zoom level to 1600%, you will see that the general text in the
document, e.g. Ken Livingstone's message on page 2, also has these
concave-sided dots. It is probably done to emphasise the shape and make it
appear consistent in all versions of the typeface, though as you spotted,
it becomes rather too obvious in larger point sizes.

It seems to be a modification of the original New Johnston design, as it
doesn't appear in samples dating from 1988 shown in "Johnston's Underground
Type" by Justin Howes.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)