In 1988, Mr. Meeker was hired by the State of Oregon to create
new signs to guide motorists to recreation areas. He was frustrated
by the clutter of the roadside and the lack of clarity in
existing signs. To help, he searched out Mr. Montalbano, and
the two men started researching typefaces, comparing American
sign type with other faces like the German DIN (for Deutsche
Industrie Norm), which goes back to autobahn signs from 1936,
and British Transport, a 1964 typeface used on motorway signs.
The
Federal Highway Administration's current typeface dates back
to 1949 and came from the tradition of handmade signs, Mr.
Montalbano said. The letters "had never really been tested,"
he said, and "they had origins in stencils and paintbrushes."
Mr.
Meeker and Mr. Montalbano made subtle changes, opening up
the interiors of the letters, making the descenders on letters
like "g" and "y" sharper and redrawing
all the letters to make them thinner.
Their
aim was a simple but clear typeface. Federal highway officials
were less than enthusiastic, they said, but they tested their
new alphabet on test tracks at the Pennsylvania Transportation
Institute at Penn State, and at the Texas Transportation Institute
at Texas A&M. "You can't do it in a lab," Mr.
Meeker said.
...
After
the first tests, Mr. Montalbano made some final refinements,
changing the height-to-width ratio of the letters and making
the lowercase letters larger. Then, in April 2002, the designers
tested the typeface again on the Pennsylvania track. The improvement
over the current typeface was striking, they said. Or as Mr.
Meeker put it: From 500 feet away, the current sign typeface
"was already breaking up, but at 750 feet, the Clearview
was still sharp."
The
researchers were surprised. "Everybody was stunned at
how much better it performed," Mr. Montalbano said. "People's
jaws dropped open."
