_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Fran Sans â font inspired by San Francisco light rail displays
stevage wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
It would be interesting to see a version with the grid line gaps
included.
shahzaibmushtaq wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
> Life is so rich when ease and efficiency are not the measure.
This is it, and I really like the CSS effects when
highlighting/selecting words, sentences and paragraphs
socalgal2 wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
Since the article compares the SF âand the Bay Areaâ to LA, they
might be surprised to find that the greater LA area has 70+ public
transit organizations. Just to name a few, LA County Transit Authority,
Big Blue Bus, Long Beach Transit, Torrence Transit, LADOT, OCTA, â¦
thenoblesunfish wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
Fun! Would love a "style 4" where you see the thin lines e.g. within
the solid squares.
pietroppeter wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
Great work! As a side track, it led me to dive into the history of the
manufacturing company of Breda trains. Originally founded in Milan late
1800s by Ernesto Breda for locomotives, expanded in the war products
during the wars, and went through nationalization, fusion to become
AnsaldoBreda and later bough by Japanese to become Hitachi Rail Italy.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Rail_Italy
inferiorhuman wrote 53 min ago:
Later to get banned from bidding on the contract for the replacement
vehicles because the trains were so mediocre (although somehow still
better than the earlier Boeings) and the company so brazenly corrupt.
Meanwhile SF runs 1800sâearly 1900s era Milan trams on their
heritage line. Not built by Breda, because of course.
kelnos wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
Ah that's so neat! I've noticed some of those details before, in how
some of the segments of the display are shaped in various ways that
lets them draw characters with smooth edges, in ways you wouldn't be
able to do with a display where the segments' shapes are homogeneous.
As soon as I saw the first photo, though, I was a little sad to realize
that it was of the old-style trains that are being phased out. The
author notes this near the end, but I think that the trains are
actually completely phased out as of a few weeks ago, maybe even before
this article was posted.
everdev wrote 6 hours 40 min ago:
This is difital archiving and will be absorbed by AI and seen by aliens
in another galaxy thousands of years from now in a borg cube.
1121redblackgo wrote 7 hours 1 min ago:
Thoroughly dank. Very well done and interesting write up.
pclark wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
Are the light rail displays ever sold anywhere?
cmdoptesc wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
Wow, the props to the author for digging deep!
> Looking inside of the display, I found labels identifying the make
and model. The signs were designed and manufactured by Trans-Lite,
Inc., a company based in Milford, Connecticut that specialised in
transport signage from 1959 until its acquisition by the Nordic firm
Teknoware in 2012. After lots of amateur detective work, and with the
help from an anonymous Reddit user in a Connecticut community group, I
was connected with Gary Wallberg, Senior Engineer at Trans-Lite and the
person responsible for the design of these very signs back in 1999.
Few years back, we had a work thread about this exact Muni Metro font
and the designers brought up segmented types. We never got as far as
the author in finding the source, but did bring up other systems with
similar typefaces.
NYC has their own called R142A: [1] And here's one inspired by Spain's
transit system:
URI [1]: https://www.nyctransitforums.com/topic/55346-r142a-mosaic-lcd-...
URI [2]: https://aresluna.org/segmented-type/
rob74 wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
Interesting! Since Ansaldo Breda is an Italian company, I would have
thought that the signs were European as well. Similar LCD "mosaic"
displays were pretty widespread over here until a few years ago (e.g.
in some platform signs on the Munich U-Bahn: [1] , scroll to
"LCD-Digitalanzeiger'), but they have all been replaced with standard
TFT flat screens (or in the case of line displays on vehicles, LED
based dot matrix displays) since...
URI [1]: https://www.u-bahn-muenchen.de/betrieb/zugzielanzeiger/
inferiorhuman wrote 58 min ago:
Yeah I'm surprised too â Breda spent a metric fuckton of money
bribing Willie Brown so that the city would buy those damn things.
Lots of European kit on them (like the Scharfenberg couplers), most
of it never worked right.
kccqzy wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
R142A is simply the name of a type of subway car. The NYCT identifies
the car by contract number which is increasing (bigger number means
more recent). The latest is R211 in three variants (R211T, R211S,
R211A).
cmdoptesc wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
Thanks for the correction!
antidamage wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
I would invite everyone to try selecting text on the linked page to see
the most low-key awesome effect ever.
waiwai933 wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
I'm struggling with deciphering the punctuation symbol between the £
and the |. Any help? (Possibly the @ symbol but my reading of the text
suggests there isn't a glyph for it, but maybe I'm wrong there)
tylervigen wrote 7 hours 26 min ago:
I think it is @ given the context of the next paragraph, where they
complain that @ doesn't work well in the grid.
jdnier wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
I had not heard of Glyphs, the tool the author used. I used to use
Fontographer long ago. [1] It's a great article!
URI [1]: https://glyphsapp.com/learn/recommendation:get-started
antidamage wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
Also a Fontographer user here. That's how you know you did font
design in the last 90s.
kingkongjaffa wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
This reminded me of [1] prev hn discussion:
URI [1]: https://aresluna.org/the-hardest-working-font-in-manhattan/
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053419
bcoates wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
"Unlike New York, Chicago or L.A., which each have one, maybe two, San
Francisco and the greater Bay Area have over two dozen"
Whaaa...? Los Angeles has a whole rat's nest of overlapping agencies,
(mostly different cities and like 4 kinds of train for some reason)
yawnxyz wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
I would love to build a programmatic version of this font defined by an
array of shapes (full square, triangle, rounded corner, pizza, and
notch), and rotations, but I think even that would be a somewhat
offense of the license, so I'm not going to publish it.
An array of those would spell out most of the symbols. Some of her
characters violate this pattern though so it only approximates most of
the symbols.
If lilsneddz responds with yes, I'd love to publish the code so people
can make public interactive displays with her font design.
I think a system like this would make it easier to prototype lowercase
and other international symbols though!
lilsneddz wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
Are you joking? this sounds sick. Please go ahead!!!
I think I need to update my website so it's more clear how open this
is, haha!
yawnxyz wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
wait really?? ok!! I thought I would actually build a typography
editor around it, maybe if you click a cell it would rotate symbols
and/or orientations. Open source of course!
This is what I'll do instead of spending time with family over
thanksgiving :P
hamburglar wrote 8 hours 5 min ago:
âI really like fun. So I made my own font editor.â â-
tom7
URI [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qTBAW-Eh0tM
yawnxyz wrote 5 min ago:
learned a ton there
california-og wrote 9 hours 17 min ago:
check out [1] and [2] for a few editors that work this way (i
made glyphdrawing.club). but please make one for this!
URI [1]: https://fontstruct.com/
URI [2]: https://glyphdrawing.club/
yawnxyz wrote 11 min ago:
wow thank you for sharing!! I'm new to all this but I'm clearly
finding a new hobby
Kylejeong21 wrote 9 hours 52 min ago:
i was literally just looking for some kind of font for my personal site
and this is super cool.
kevin_thibedeau wrote 9 hours 53 min ago:
There are higher detail versions of these LCD displays like those used
on the NJ Transit Comet cars: [1] Should be possible to get a passable
@ on those.
URI [1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/recluse26/286211358/
windows2020 wrote 7 hours 34 min ago:
That was my first thought as well. I've spent time on those cars on
the Coast Line. They used to indicate the next stop, but it broke at
some point. I don't ride much anymore. I'm not surprised what's
pictured is NJ TRANSIT, the fallback. Would be nice to have faster
trains someday. Until then, crack a beer and enjoy the ride.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote 10 hours 14 min ago:
I am not expert but I really like the font. It does a lot for such a
primitive display. Makes me wonder why we used to have those bad 80s
90s alphanumeric LCD displays in most places too cheap for pixels when
they could have done this.
some_guy_nobel wrote 10 hours 19 min ago:
> For commercial and non-commercial use of FRAN SANS, please get in
touch: emily@emilysneddon.com
Cool article, pretty lame that the person creating a recreation of a
public-funded font is gatekeeping it behind their email, though.
lilsneddz wrote 9 hours 59 min ago:
Ouch, that was certainly not my intention. I didn't expect this to be
shared around, and hadn't considered the best way to make it
available. It's open, and I've shared it for free with every single
person who has emailed me. I feel like this slower form of
distribution is closer to the original intent of the font as I've
been able to connect and chat with lots of incredible SF locals and
Muni fans in the process. :)
I made Fran Sans for fun in my own spare time which was a lot of
work. I do want to add that all fonts are inspired by work that came
before it... yet at some point, the font becomes your own. Yes, Fran
Sans is based on the Trans-Lite signage, however when I digitised it,
I had to make a number of my own personal design decisions along the
way which makes this work my own. Particularly the addition of
different styles and characters that were never made for the original
signage.
I hoped my intent came through in my commitment to researching and
sharing this piece of local history that would have otherwise been
lost as there was nothing to be found online when I started this
journey.
Hope this clears up my intention, I'd love to send you a copy if
you're interested, and I'm open to hearing your distribution ideas.
dirtybirdnj wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
I agree with the hamburglar (lol) you did awesome work and you owe
the internet nothing. the 3d printing community is rife with "stl
please" expectations that everyone wants to share everything and it
should all be free. Give it away if you can, but I think its
important to have some value to the creative work like this that is
done.
> I've shared it for free with every single person who has emailed
me.
Excited and waiting :) I think it's going to make really cool pen
plotter art
hamburglar wrote 7 hours 56 min ago:
You just gotta get used to a knee jerk âyouâre open sourcing
wrongâ reaction youâre gonna get from a community of people who
are accustomed to it all being done in a certain way (namely, that
itâs generally open and copyable without interaction with -gasp-
humans). Youâre doing fine and your responses have been perfect
imo.
int0x29 wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
When I was a child the front side displays on new Muni buses used to
use these probably solonoid driven LED arrays. If you sat under one
you could here this clattering sound that sounded kinda like rain each
time the display changed. This discussion is bringing back old
memories of those.
The older Breda trains and I think buses also used to use backlit paper
rolls for signs: [1] Those were significantly more readable
URI [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/T_Third_Is...
inferiorhuman wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
Assuming you mean one of these guys: [1] [2] The signs made quite a
racket, but so did the buses (well, the first model I linked to).
Fun fact: When Muni first rolled out the digital signs on their newer
Bredas the set the signs to rotate through three different pieces of
information. So for 2/3 of the time you had no indication of where
the train was headed.
Bonus fun fact: the cloth rolls have a variety of routes and
destinations that never came to be.
URI [1]: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/images/6/60/San_Francisco_MUNI_8001-a....
URI [2]: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/File:San_Francisco_MUNI_8110...
rsynnott wrote 23 min ago:
When I was a kid, DART (a not-quite-metro rapid transit thing in
Dublin) trains had printed maps with LEDs for each station; they
were green until the train passed them, then turned red. This
seemed like absolute magic to me at the time.
When a branch line was added, these displays were updated, though
they werenât put in the newer rolling stock. Then another station
was opened on the existing line, and they just switched them off.
Theyâre still present on some trains, but havenât done anything
in 15 years. Theyâll finally presumably go away in the next year
or so, as the â80s rolling stock theyâre found in is due to be
retired. Iâll kind of miss them.
lilsneddz wrote 10 hours 24 min ago:
They certainly did. The SFMTA also showed these to me and explained
that not only were they extremely temperamental, but it also cost
about $3k to print one of the curtains with the special barcode that
prompts the curtains to rotate.
kens wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
I appreciate that the author talked to various people (technician,
engineer) and visited the shop rather than just doing online research.
It's rare for people to go to the effort of in-person research.
flypunk wrote 10 hours 51 min ago:
This post ends with a beautiful poem set in Frans Sans
OUTSIDE MY LIFE,
INSIDE THE DREAM.
FALLING UP THE STAIRS,
INTO THE STREET.
LET THE CABLE CAR
CARRY ME.
STRAIGHT OUT OF TOWN,
INTO THE SEA.
PAST THE DAHLIAS AND
THE SELF-DRIVING CARS.
THE CHURCH OF 8 WHEELS.
THE LOWER HAIGHT BARS.
THE PEAK HOUR SPRAWL.
THE KIDS IN THE PARK.
THE SLANTING HOUSES.
THE BAY AFTER DARK.
MY WINDOW, MY OWN
SILVER SCREEN.
I FOLLOW WHERE THE
FOG TAKES ME.
By MADDY CARRUCAN
namanyayg wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
I moved to SF this year and I love this poem.
Q: is the church of 8 wheels really a popular destination? Or is this
the poet's bias towards the haight and hayes areas?
For me, Mission Dolores represents "classic SF" and is the area I'm
fondest of -- and contrarily, the Salesforce Park and the surrounding
area is the pinnacle of tech & capitalism (and b2b saas.)
shevy-java wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
So ... hard to read then?
lynndotpy wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
This is the spitting image of the "FontStruct" tool, which I have fond
memories of! I wonder if there was some overlap.
I second the sentiments here about typography nerds. This is very very
cool.
seniortaco wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
For some reason when I read this font in the digital samples, it feels
a bit Soviet? I subconsciously expect the text to be in cyrillic.
Beijinger wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
For commercial and non-commercial use of FRAN SANS, please get in
touch: emily@......com
msarnoff wrote 11 hours 31 min ago:
I have seen these throughout the US and Europe and been fascinated by
them. Penn Station has (had? been a while) a big one with more segments
per character. Iâve been trying forever to find the name of this
particular style of segmented displays and get more info on them. The
closest I could find is âmosaic display.â
Love this article!
Signed,
someone who has an obsession with segmented displays
badlibrarian wrote 10 hours 47 min ago:
[1]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-flap_display
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-disc_display
msarnoff wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
When I was last at Penn Station in the 2010s their departure board
was a mosaic LCD like the article, not a split-flap display: [1] I
do miss the split flap displays at the Boston and Providence Amtrak
stations thoughâ¦
URI [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Penn_S...
sho_hn wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
It's probably Reitberger's 38-segment AFA alphanumeric LCD: [1] [2]
These are very common here.
URI [1]: https://www.reitberger.de/English/Large%20displays/Alphanume...
URI [2]: https://www.reitberger.de/English/Broadsheet/Prospekt_GA_AFA...
Aloisius wrote 8 hours 59 min ago:
The Penn Station passenger display was, according to the NYT,
segmented LCD glass made by Signature Technologies in Arizona.
It had 43 segments (each character had a 13 segment column, 17
segments column, then another 13 segment column that was a mirror
of the first). You can see the segment shape on the original sign:
[1] The same segment design was used on in Spain along with a more
angular version:
URI [1]: https://media.wired.com/photos/59327db4aef9a462de983397/3:...
URI [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210602143217im_/https://pbs....
meta-level wrote 11 hours 49 min ago:
I like it because my first name is Frans
myself248 wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
I wonder what's happening to the displays that're being retired! I hope
someone can nab them from the waste stream...
lilsneddz wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
Hi, I'm Emily the designer of Fran Sans. One of the Breda cars is
going to the California State Railroad Museum, and it has the
displays in it. I also suggested to the Letterform Archive in SF that
they may have interest in it. I do know they've archived some of the
NY subway curtain displays, so I think it's only fair they save one
of these in their collections too.
agg23 wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
Beware that pressing the back arrow twice takes you to unexpected naked
photos.
seniortaco wrote 11 hours 29 min ago:
Are they naked photos you've seen before?
crazygringo wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
This is the second comment I've seen on HN today about the back
button having unexpected results on a site.
I'm so confused -- I use Chrome on a Mac and my back button works
entirely normally. No naked photos, sorry to report.
Is this a real thing that Chrome isn't susceptible to? Or are people
just making jokes?
adastra22 wrote 11 hours 50 min ago:
Use the arrow key. It moves the carousel, landing on some
scandalizing artistic photos.
crazygringo wrote 7 hours 26 min ago:
Oh, thank you. I've never heard of the left arrow key being
called the back arrow.
wkat4242 wrote 10 hours 32 min ago:
Not much scandalising in that IMO. Very arty photos. Would anyone
find this offensive?
adastra22 wrote 7 hours 48 min ago:
I donât think any reasonable person would, but there are
contexts in which unexpected partial nudity might be
troublesome. If oneâs a librarian or teacher browsing the web
from a very public desk where people can see my screen, Iâd
appreciate the warning.
decimalenough wrote 12 hours 12 min ago:
Here you go: [1] NSFW, obviously, but also not all that
titillating. (It's artsy B&W photography of women in their
bathrooms.)
URI [1]: https://emilysneddon.com/tinn
anamexis wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
They mean the left arrow key on your keyboard.
gorgoiler wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
I like the underlying commitment to design in the original displays.
Seemingly the double height slants on the bottom are solely for
rendering the letter V. They have no other purpose than for that
letter.
lilsneddz wrote 11 hours 0 min ago:
I'm the designer of Fran Sans and I love that you noticed this detail
in the original displays!!! :)
roughly wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
That was a great read with a ton of fun little bread crumbs to follow.
Tipo Velez/Super Veloz gets a mention, and itâs definitely worthy of
a diversion if you havenât seen it before.
For all the modern handwringing about SF, it really is a hell of a city
with a fascinating history.
adastra22 wrote 13 hours 23 min ago:
As a native that absolutely cringes at "San Fran" ... I still got mad
respect for that awesome name. Well done.
RyJones wrote 5 hours 19 min ago:
Itâs been a while since I grabbed this:
URI [1]: https://blog.ryjones.org/2006/10/21/Welcome-to-the-Bay-Area
renewiltord wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
Itâs funny how most SF posts will have an âas a nativeâ say
that. You donât really get that from London as much. Strangely
parochial attribute of the culture. I wonder which other cities have
such populations. NYC has a big âtransplantâ vs. ânativeâ
thing going on so maybe itâs just American, but I think people do
it in Vancouver too. Though Canadians just kind of copy Americans for
the most part.
Iâve taken to calling the city San Fran as a result. Sometimes I
enjoy a good EssEffOh or Frisco too. Really gets the audience going.
jeffreygoesto wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
London England or London Ontario?
adastra22 wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
NYC is the only other one I can think of, though Iâm sure there
are many. Maybe LA as well? Itâs just that the transplants
outnumber the natives by a large amount. The house I live in now
was fruit orchards when I was born.
lilsneddz wrote 11 hours 4 min ago:
Hey, I made this font. I really ummed and ahhed over the name for
this exact same reason. But in the end it was just too clever to pass
up. Thanks for moving past it, haha.
neonmagenta wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
what you chose was 100% wayy too good to pass up, that wouldve been
the first thing pun-lovers pointed out if you chose anything else.
because ITS RIGHT THERE
hamburglar wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
I also approve of the cleverness. Correct choice not to pass it
up.
I also have a soft spot for typography weenies, and appreciation
for well thought out typography in an age when it seems like itâs
becoming rarer and rarer. Great to see this on HN.
drob518 wrote 8 hours 55 min ago:
Bonus points for cleverness.
decimalenough wrote 12 hours 14 min ago:
I'll be sure to call it "Frisco" instead.
+1 on the awesome name though.
zjp wrote 9 hours 56 min ago:
That's fine, it's what people from the east and south sides call
it.
bonoboTP wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
Sans Francisco
simondotau wrote 11 hours 39 min ago:
A silent router: Sans Fancisco
jabberwhookie wrote 12 hours 52 min ago:
I've always found that cringe to be a strange shibboleth. AFAICT
everyone has to summarize with the bay area instead, which I find
even more comic having grown up on a coast, aka a bay area.
nvader wrote 6 hours 47 min ago:
My theory for why "San Fran" is looked down upon is that the person
saying it is perceived as making a claim to status: 'I am so cool
and hip that I am on familiar terms with "San Fran".'
But shortening San Francisco to San Fran is both very obvious, and
betrays a cheap attempt at sophistication that the soul of SF
rejects.
SF feels like a transitory city as multiple successive waves of
people drift in and out. That also contribute to why a shibboleth
like this gets a lot of airtime. The episode probably recurs weekly
in bars all over the city as someone who's just moved here calls it
"San Fran", only to be corrected by someone who's been here for
just a little longer.
chaboud wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
Well, this is THE Bay Area, where we live in THE city, drive on THE
101, and eat in THE Chinatown.... wait...
Funny enough, though, it wasn't until I moved here 15+ years ago
that it struck me how odd it is to call it "the Bay Area" and
expect people to know what that means. Nonetheless, sportscasters
do it. Musicians do it. All other bay areas are just areas around
bays...
stevage wrote 1 hour 6 min ago:
like "the tristate"
slater wrote 6 hours 49 min ago:
> drive on THE 101
excuuuuuuse you? It's "drive on 101" in NorCal :P
ucarion wrote 6 hours 50 min ago:
Eddie Izzard was joking in 1998 about the "The" and the
prohibited names for The City ( [1] ), so it's probably been like
this for many decades thence!
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/QRB_GhLXCds?si=R4kYkodzvYDxe33H&t=276
adastra22 wrote 11 hours 53 min ago:
The bay area is more than SF. If you mean San Francisco and don't
want to say the whole name, you use either 'SF' or 'the city.'
I'm not sure why it's a strange shibboleth? Not every name has to
be shortened, and if you are going to shorten names, not every
short form is acceptable. I don't know where "San Fran" came from,
any more than "Cali", neither of which are used by locals, but it
just doesn't feel respectable. It's not the name of the city.
gghffguhvc wrote 8 hours 32 min ago:
When I lived in SF I walked past this street art a couple of
times a week and got a smile.
URI [1]: https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/eugenia-avenue-pro...
adastra22 wrote 5 hours 28 min ago:
Ha, thatâs great!
gerdesj wrote 11 hours 46 min ago:
"SF ... It's not the name of the city."
Your words ... 8)
adastra22 wrote 11 hours 28 min ago:
You've never met an Alexander that despises being called
"Alex"?
gerdesj wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
No. Why would you "despise" being referred to?
My first name is Jonathan, I generally get referred to as
(int al) Jon, Jonny, Jo, or John (bloody silent letters).
As it turns out, until I was 20 I thought my name was spelt
Jonathon. I got a copy of my birth cert to get a student
loan and discovered the "truth" - even my passport was wrong
and my parents had to sort out the first few of those and
they should have known better! I was born in 1970 and no one
noticed that I misspelt my own first name for 20 years.
mkoubaa wrote 9 hours 58 min ago:
No but they all seem upset when I call them Alexa
clhodapp wrote 11 hours 42 min ago:
I think it honesty just boils down to: It sounds bad.
arkensaw wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
Be honest though, did the name come first?
lilsneddz wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
Haha, hi, it's me, Emily, the designer of this font. It actually
didn't come first! And strangely finding an available name was almost
the hardest part.
becomevocal wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
Have been in font picking mode recently so this was a relevant enough
distraction. Excellent read!
Johnny555 wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
>On route, train operators punch the code into a control panel at the
back of the display, and the LCD blocks light on specific segments of
the grid to build each letter
I always thought those were mechanical displays with little mechanical
shutters that moved to display the segments... like these: [1] Never
knew they were LCD.
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/Gj_mTp6Ypzk
Doctor_Fegg wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
For UK readers, this is eerily similar to the typeface originally used
on the "Thames Turbo" trains (class 165/166) from their construction in
the 1990s until a refurb about five years ago - I could believe it was
the same manufacturer. Some photos: [1]
URI [1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:166207_DMCO_Interior.J...
URI [2]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Rail_Class...
croisillon wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
i believe that 3x5 display is quite common and might not have its
origin in SF
JackFr wrote 8 hours 42 min ago:
It seems identical to the displays used in NJ Transit trains.
Aloisius wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
NJ Transit uses 105-segment displays. Not only do they include
lowercase letters, but the uppercase and numbers are noticeably
different from MUNI's 38-segment displays.
croisillon wrote 25 min ago:
ha :) [1] and from that discussion: [2] in Vienna we have a 66
segment:
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/typography/comments/1jp9juj/i...
URI [2]: https://aresluna.org/segmented-type/
URI [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vienna_u-bahn_displ...
oktwtf wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
Typography nerds are some of my favourite nerds.
Font specimen pages are so often screaming with design language and
intention, they push and prod to evoke and present.
Maybe the secret has something to do with the lack of priority to the
actual content; just present the font gosh-darn!
Looks nicely executed within the confines of the inspiration. very cool
shagie wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
Andrew Glassner's Notebook: Recreational Computer Graphics is a
really neat book (I especially like the tiles that can add numbers).
The author's site is [1] Chapter 6 in the book ( [2] ) Signs of
Significance starts with 7 segment displays to the 14 segment and
5x7...
He then goes on to the 66 segment Vienna underground font and an 83
segment font he saw in an elevator at a Siggraph conference in
Orlando ... and then concludes with his own 55 element mosaic.
--
Also, Adam Savage's Tested - [3] (3 days ago) looking at [4] At 7:00
into the video is C & D pages looking at the modularity of a font.
(the section "U & V" about 3/4 down the page has the modular
components for Kombinations-Schrift [5] which was also looked at at
22:00 into the video.
URI [1]: https://glassner.com/computer-graphics/
URI [2]: https://archive.org/details/andrewglassnersn0000glas/page/98...
URI [3]: https://youtu.be/eKCcqlJnZcA
URI [4]: https://www.kellianderson.com/books/alphabetinmotion.html
URI [5]: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/2724
Aloisius wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
Someone made a JavaScript version of Glassner's 55 segment design
along with a dozen others that's fun to play with:
URI [1]: https://aresluna.org/segmented-type/
shagie wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
The six segment one... if you get going with it, it's not too
difficult to read. There are some odd ones there, but it's
surprisingly readable (some are easier than some of the seven
segment letterforms).
eichin wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
FYI no lower case, also "contact the author for licensing". (The
article is a neat story of digging into the history of the displays
which are about to be going out of service, as well as some practical
aspects of the font design - it's just not casually available.)
lilsneddz wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
Honestly, I wasn't expecting this font to go anywhere, and then the
SF Chronicle reached out, which has been lovely. Anyone who emails me
can have a copy, I just haven't made an easy download link. I've
thought about it since, but actually it's way nicer to hear from
people and hear about what they're making. It is a community-driven
project, and this slower form of distribution feels closer to my
original intent. :)
aoki wrote 13 hours 44 min ago:
> Back at the SFMTA, Armando told me the Breda vehicles are being
replaced, and with them their destination displays will be swapped for
newer LED dot-matrix units that are more efficient and easier to
maintain. By the end of 2025 the signs that inspired Fran Sans will
disappear from the city, taking with them a small but distinctive part
of the cityâs voice.
:-(
inferiorhuman wrote 2 hours 41 min ago:
All of the Breda LRVs were retired earlier this month and their
replacements use entirely different displays. Can't say I'll be that
nostalgic for the signs or trains.
amelius wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
If the dot-matrix is fine enough, you could still render any font
properly. Plus you can add emoticons :)
ChrisArchitect wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
Start here for more of the actual font:
URI [1]: https://emilysneddon.com/fransans
zygentoma wrote 13 hours 45 min ago:
Both of these pages seem to me like they're designed for mobile-only
usage.
I'm sitting here with a 4k screen, browser maximized, and all text
is, like, huuuuge!
And the worst part? You can't zoom! Seems kind of user-hostile to me
â¦
pabs3 wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
Disabling CSS helps.
DIR <- back to front page