Interstate

Starting in 1949, a team of road engineers and sign painters developed a new and clearer style of lettering for highway signs. A scientist’s rigor and a tradesman’s common sense merged—not always smoothly—to create Highway Gothic, which became the federal standard for road signage and a pervasive feature of the American landscape. The original alphabets were developed for the California Division of Highways by Dr. Theodore W. Forbes, assisted by J.E. Penton and E.E. Radek. Interstate began as a personal challenge to build a typeface from the unlikely source of highway lettering. By traditional precepts, this design is full of shapes that are “wrong” but essential to its personality, like the uppercase letters which range from oddly cramped to strangely wide or the abrupt descender of the lowercase g. Frere-Jones redesigned every original shape and extrapolated missing characters such as ampersands and foreign accents, using a light touch throughout to preserve both durability and the stumbling, dissonant charm. Contributions by Cyrus Highsmith, Nina Stössinger, Davy Dai, Richard Lipton [frerejones.com]

Originally released by Font Bureau in 1993 and moved to Frere–Jones Type in 2020 [fontsinuse.com], available through Type Network. An updated version was published on the foundry’s website in December 2024.