Rail Alphabet is a typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for British Railways. First used by them in signing tests at London's Liverpool Street Station, it was then adopted by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as part of their comprehensive 1965 rebranding of the company.
Rail Alphabet is similar, but not identical, to a bold weight of Helvetica (and, not quite as similar, Akzidenz Grotesk or Arial). Akzidenz Grotesk had earlier also provided the same designers the broad inspiration for the Transport typeface used for all road signs in the United Kingdom.
Read more about Rail Alphabet: British Rail, Other Uses, New Rail Alphabet
Famous quotes containing the words rail and/or alphabet:
“We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe the alphabet is no longer considered an essential piece of equipment for traveling through life. In my day it was the keystone to knowledge. You learned the alphabet as you learned to count to ten, as you learned “Now I lay me” and the Lord’s Prayer and your father’s and mother’s name and address and telephone number, all in case you were lost.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)