P22 Underground fonts and font family

Fonts > P22 Underground font family from P22

About P22 Underground
Originally commissioned in 1916 for use in the London Transport system, Edward Johnston’s typeface immediately became an icon in graphic design and typography. Commissioned by first Chief Executive of London Transport Frank Pick to create a typeface belonging unmistakably to the twentieth century, Johnston’s design was intended to be distinctly legible and, most importantly, functional.

P22’s London Underground font set from 1997 attempts to retain the character and occasional eccentricities of the original Johnston drawings and wood type, later modified in "New Johnston" created by the design firm of Banks and Miles in the early 1980s. Johnston’s preliminary face showed several variations on the final letterforms and a few of these alternate designs have been included for optional usage. The true testament to Johnston’s legacy of design is its continued modern usage and the scores of imitations which developed from Johnston’s work. Johnston’s original typeface became the model and inspiration for such modern sans-serif typefaces as Futura and Gill Sans.

P22 Underground Pro expands on the historical design by Edward Johnston, licensed exclusively to P22 from the London Transport Museum. The overall design of P22 Underground Pro is kept as intended by Johnston and builds upon the proportion system adhered to by Johnston in designing the London Underground face as follows: Hairline 1:35 • Light 1:12 • Book 1:9 • Medium 1:7 • DemiBold 1:6 • Heavy 1:5.

Additional OpenType features, such as Small Caps and Petite Caps, are included in all 6 weights. Titling options that mimic London Transport signage are included in the medium weight and lower case characters have been added to the bold weight (Heavy). The addition of many Unicode ranges for unprecedented language support makes this the most expansive P22 font system ever. Over 5000 glyphs in each of the 6 weights cover most Latin based languages plus IPA, Vietnamese, symbols and stylistic variants plus separate Greek (monotonic & polytonic) and Cyrillic pro sets. All fonts contain basic OpenType, TrueType and PostScript formats. The outlines of Regular and Bold have been subtly redrawn and expanded, they are now available as Medium and Heavy respectively.

Designed by Paul Hunt 2007.