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Words, music, comment, notes, news, and updates since 1997 from Derek K. Miller, a writer, editor, web guy, drummer, and dad who's a blogger in Vancouver, Canada.
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Penmachine
14 August 2007
Why isn't the Clearview typeface free?
Via John Gruber, here's a neat article about Clearview, a font designed specifically to make highway signage more readable, and now being put to use in many jurisdictions, including here in British Columbia, as old road signs are replaced.
I was a bit surprised to see that if you want to get the font yourself, you need to spend at least $175 USD. If Clearview really is that much more legible and useful than its predecessors such as Highway Gothic, and therefore leads to safer driving, it would seem reasonable for the U.S. federal government or some other agency to pay the designers (who worked on the font for a long time) a decent fee to make it freely licensable to anyone. Then anyone could use it for any kind of signage anywhere, presumably even saving some lives in the process.
Given how many billions of dollars it costs to build roads, the tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars it would take to set up such a free licensing arrangement would seem like money well spent.
Labels: driving, font, johngruber, roads, signs, typography
Comments:
Christ !
What a country !
If you drive a few miles, I guess you can get to Mount Olympus !
: 15 August, 2007 01:48https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Frutiger
: 15 August, 2007 03:20Clearview Highway is pretty expensive. The entire family of 13 fonts (both "B" and "W" series) costs nearly $800. The similar ClearviewOne family for print graphics use costs a lot too, around $1200 for all of the weights in that "super font." There's a new ClearviewADA family made for ADA sign purposes.
As for making a freeware version, there's already a "Roadgeek 2005" series of Clearview imitation fonts one can download for free. They're not as cleanly drawn as the commercial fonts however.
Oddly, type companies can only copyright a typeface's name and not the actual letter shapes. There's really nothing out there to prevent others from making Clearview clones and distributing them freely or commercially.
: 08 September, 2007 16:22Clearview Highway is pretty expensive. The entire family of 13 fonts (both "B" and "W" series) costs nearly $800. The similar ClearviewOne family for print graphics use costs a lot too, around $1200 for all of the weights in that "super font." There's a new ClearviewADA family made for ADA sign purposes.
As for making a freeware version, there's already a "Roadgeek 2005" series of Clearview imitation fonts one can download for free. They're not as cleanly drawn as the commercial fonts however.
Oddly, type companies can only copyright a typeface's name and not the actual letter shapes. There's really nothing out there to prevent others from making Clearview clones and distributing them freely or commercially.
: 08 September, 2007 16:23Site contents © 1997-2010 by Derek K. Miller, some rights reserved.
