Heathrow is another victim of the homogenization of the world’s airports, its regional identity robbed by replacing a perfectly functional, custom British serif with ubiquitous Frutiger.
I’ve watched the change take place over the last 3 years and the cleansing is now nearly complete. Shed another tear for typographic diversity.
If anyone knows who made the dearly departed typeface, please let me know. I’d like to do a piece on Typographica.
Ralf_H., litherland, camaleon citrico, and 6 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Dezcom 49 months ago | reply
Shed another tear. Soon generic airport feelings will have you wondering "Where the f*** am I!"
Indra Kupferschmid 49 months ago | reply
I researched about that in connection with Matthew Carters 1960 design for Heathrow (Helveticalike face derived from Standard) in cooperation with Colin Forbes.
Later Kinneir & Calvert designed a new signage system, yellow back-lit signs wih black type. But I guess the seriffed Type is not that old. It's called BAA sign or BAA Bembo. I'll mail you the current styleguide.
"The signage typeface used at the moment is called BAA Bembo, and was drawn by Shelley Winter. I believe Freda Sack worked on it too. I Recently went to a Sign Design Society talk by Rob Waller, who has done some legibilty testing on it. His testing showed it to be surprisingly legible compared to Frutiger and Vialog."
typophile.com/node/18379
Dezcom 49 months ago | reply
Thanks, Indra!
jteore 49 months ago | reply
The Symbolism of the plane has such a huge impact_
I really am stumped as to why that had to visually go.
Stewf 49 months ago | reply
Thanks, Indra!
jt - The iconography is the same, it's just the type that changed. Sorry about the bad crop. Only comparing type here.
James John Malcolm 49 months ago | reply
At least the sign looks clearer now!
duncehat 49 months ago | reply
Didn't Jeremy Tankard, designer of 'Bliss' do some work on this a while back? Perhaps his work was for a different project. http://www.typography.net/commissions/project/british_airports_authority
Stewf 33 months ago | reply
Stewf 33 months ago | reply