Monotype

0:24So I'm here to talk about the redesign of Johnston London's underground typeface the first project I worked on when I joined monotype in February and I really couldn't have thought of a more amazing way to start my new job in London from a foreigners point of view it's really a legendary piece of graphic and type design so yeah it's a really great hunger to work on this project.

0:54And I just want to quickly say that I didn't work alone on this project but along with Nadine Shane and Toshi Oh McGary so before I get more into the detail of the projects just so you have a basic idea of what I'll be talking about I just wanted to show you a brief sort of preview of the three main stages of the typeface so that the top line is the initial wood type by John Stone himself the second line is new Jonathan for the first digital phone that existed from which we we started the project and the third one is the interpretation that we produced at Pune type so you can see the differences are pretty subtle so it's not really purely a pure creation kind of project with more revival refresh or recreation so just a little bit of history Edward Johnson himself was a very interesting character apart from this typeface is mostly known as a calligrapher and a teacher he revived calligraphy which was pretty much dead by the end of the 19th century and he sort of rediscovered medieval techniques of writing with a broad nib pen he also really strongly disliked all sorts of manufactured an industry Oh production.

2:24So I think mr.

2:28There must have been a sort of tension probably when he accepted this job which is probably an interesting fact he wrote writing eliminating and lettering in 1906 and already you can see a few bits here and there a few elements that will appear later in the typeface so in 1913 he was commissioned by Frank pig to design a set of uppercase letters for the underground network. And I think just want to take a minute to talk about Frank Frank because I think is really the unsung hero of history in a way as you can see the the brief that she gave to Johnson already really defined the typeface he actually hesitated to design the typeface himself and yeah.

3:21I think it was a really great visionary he really insisted on having a consistency of design across the network on all mediums and I think any understood that a typeface could be a key element in this.

3:40So these are Johnston's early early sketches and so first was only a set of uppercase letters that were basically some models for people to then make little graphic posters it's interesting because you can see that in these early sketches the typeface is not in a final form yet it's really trying to find the right tone like you can see some different double double use and some letters are still really trying to come to find their shapes and yeah the typeface really came alive in the first users which will be unthinkable nowadays when you have to create a project really fast and matters of week or month so you can see who's first is early uses some really strange proportions on the letters like this very wide and out H and so as the typhus is being more and more used by DFL a lowercase is commissioned and here too in these early examples you can see it's some awkward sort of spacing and proportions so here again the typhus is really trying to find it voice as it appears in the first users in 1916 so that's three years after the Commission a complete set is is is done in wood and metal type I think that's probably a time word when Johnston revised and stabilized the alphabet into a more a coherent home. So if we take a look more into the actual proportions of the typeface below you can see double pages from transplants book on the left is pictures from the hydrent column in Rome. And so you can see that. There are really similar sort of proportions like the very narrow be a very wide V and D for instance same thing with the the lowercase that's an exists is an exercise for the humanists minuscule calligraphy model and you can see some strong resemblance like the lowercase a you also understand why the the I and J have this diamond shape Tito which come from the broad nib pen and I think to really understand how revolutionary the typeface was you have to have an idea of what was the state of typography at the time the the Industrial Revolution had made its mark on to society and what you would see everywhere where grotesque so personally I really loved these shapes and they're really really beautiful shapes but at the time they were really a strong sort of representation of industrialization.

6:40And I think for people like Johnston they were sort of typographic monstrosity anyway. And so in this very very schematic view of type history you can see that the the grotesque are a sort of logical form Gatien of the the modern letter and so what Johnston did was pretty was basically to go back half a century in time to use humanists muddled into a serif typeface so I just said the century goes by the wood type is being worn down and new technologies are emerging and so a Chicano at an agency called banks and mile completely reworked the typeface to make first type is for phototypesetting and then later digital phones so you can see that Johnston is not one specific type face but it's really more a sort of evolving sort of archetype and I think that's what makes this project very interesting even through the century quite a few times the question as to whether Johnston should be kept or not was asked and each time the answer was to finally keep it but to modify it. And so 100 years after Frank TKE when John Hunter this is John Hunter from t FL the head of design he commissioned monotype to redesign new Johnston and the brief really focused on a few key elements like the lowercase G also create to create thanks for the web which obviously were not so much in use at the time of Johnson. And some lighter weights as well so when we started the project we had the chance to visit the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton.

8:51So the really great because like you have amazing buses and trains and also you can you can see in one place all the different states of Johnston.

9:03And then we so we went on to like compare new Johnson to the original wood type so as you can see there are like strong differences on the lowercase G for instance that was like one of these things the the brief focused on was mostly but also overall the proportions that changed quite a lot it had big it had become more functional or space-saving overall narrower so that was a very logical thing to do at the time when I Chicano design new Johnston.

9:42But we in a way we thought it had lost some of its soul and we also looked at these amazing posters from the time of Johnston and realized that.

9:53There was a real sense of joy of taking the tube at the time more no longer the case some really nice coaches but for the really sort of luxury so in a way by changing slightly the proportions we tried to very slightly given this sense of joy and more sort of relaxed feel we also tried to go back to a sort of geometry which was really strongly present in the original drawings and to have less optical Corrections here on the D something more geometrical and I think this.

10:40This is really some something that was present in Johnson's original drawing so yeah we tried to go back back to something a bit more authentic to Johnston's original intentions also because we needed to add some lighter weights I decided to create a hairline version so parky for production purposes but also because it's a very interesting way to research a typeface you know visual individual way to try to look for it kallen instructure and strip it from all the stylistic attribute so this was at first a way to create sort of intermediary weights but when Nadine Saudis so who was looking over the general project she immediately fell in love with the lighter weights and we decided to show it to TfL who immediately loved these hair line whites as well.

11:50So we decided to keep this hair line type face it was very interesting exercise probably the most challenging part of the project and hopefully manages to bring a sort of fresh something a bit fresh to the project while retaining the spirit of johnston.

12:13So this is the final family so the pace will gradually replace the junction it will first be used on like CFLs promotional posters and material on the web as well obviously and then it will progressively replace anything that needs to be to be changed and it will be used throughout the new elisabeth line but already it's a real pleasure to see your typeface in use insert in such iconic pieces of information desiring this is the famous map by Harry Beck and it's going to be exciting to see it progressively arrived in the network and that such really the final test of any type face to see how it performs in in real life so fingers crossed thank you very much