Signal
Styles
Signal ExtraLight
Signal ExtraLight Italic
Signal Light
Signal Light Italic
Signal Regular
Signal Italic
Signal Bold
Signal Bold Italic
Signal In Use
Since the French Percent-for-art program has been extended to the Ministry of Transport in 1980, the country saw more and more rest areas along its highways embellished with public art sculptures. Some are truly exquisite, others less so – beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What most of them have in common is the colossal size. Astoundingly, this quality didn’t save them from being overlooked by general public and art historians. There was no comprehensive register or database covering France’s “Highway Art” until graphic designer Julien Lelièvre took the initiative. From 2009 to 2015 he travelled thousands of kilometers, photographing and documenting 71 of these pieces of art. In 2019 Lelièvre’s research was translated into the richly illustrated book Art d’autoroute, designed by Building Paris. It was the first title of their new publishing branch Building Books, dedicated to landscape, urbanism, and architecture. For the typography of the book, Lelièvre teamed up with Emmanuel Besse who, in 2018, had released Signal Compressed in Production Type’s LAB section. Besse’s Signal Compressed draws its inspiration from the lettering painted on streets to inform drivers. In this book, the typeface is used in small quantities but prominent spots. The second typeface used, Signal, was actually developed around this publication. It has its roots in Caractères, the lettering style for French road signage, legally defined since 1948. The designers complemented it with lowercase letters and carried it to a fully functional typeface suitable for setting reading text. Emmanuel Besse and Production Type meanwhile developed Signal into an extensive family.
Signal Regular + Signal Compressed Regular
Art d’autoroute by Julien Lelièvre (Building Books)
A visual research on what the life of long-haul truckers looks like, what they talk about and what they look at – a student project by Arzamas’ designer Masha Kasatkina. The book consists of four parts: “Trucks, From Outside and Within”, “Road, and on the Road”, “Brotherhood”, “Echo in the Culture”. Signal, based on a typeface from French road signs, reminds of the constant moving, while Archaism resembles wild typography of print ads and naïve design of the roadside restaurants. The serif typeface used for body text is Newton. Shelley Script Cyrillic is used for decoration, drop caps and selected elements. Read the entire article on our website.
Signal Bold
Long-Haul Truck Drivers
Information
Design
Release Date
2019-06-11Team
Version
1.004About this font
Until now, Caractères had existed only in its standardized form: four incomplete styles named L1, L2, L4 (an italic variant with both upper- and lowercase characters), and L5. The bootleg digital versions available were similarly incomplete and poorly executed.
Specifically developed with urban signage, interfaces, and exhibition design in mind, Production Type’s new Signal series completes and extends the pre-existing set of styles. The palette is an extrapolation of previously unexisting roman lowercases in four weights and their matching italics, a complete set of accents for multilingual typesetting, numerous arrows and pictograms, and characters for mathematical typesetting. An extra Compressed style, skewed and excessive, wittily rounds out the family. As a new ensemble, Signal boosts Caractères’ potential, making it particularly well-suited for interface design.
An epitome of late-modernist thinking, Signal’s aesthetic is inextricably bound up with administrative design. The letters conform to the rigor that suffused most sans serifs of the second half of the twentieth century. Signal has a bespoke appearance and a distinctive typographic color (see especially the unconventional spacing of the italic cuts). Production Type has a long-standing relationship with signage typefaces, making them a focus of research from as early as 2003. This new Signal, revisited and harmonized, continues our reflexion and opens up new possibilities for dialogue.
Formats
Static (OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2)About the designers
Emmanuel Besse
Designer
Emmanuel Besse is an art director and a type designer with a focus to open-ended and inclusive approach to communication.
