![]() ![]() Transport (the typeface) would eventually become ubiquitous on Britain’s road signs and beyond. ↑ Before Kinneir/Calvert’s work, British road signs tended to look something like the lower one in this photograph (although other varieties existed). ![]() It was the first time mixed case lettering had been used on British road signs, which up until then had used all-capitals wording. The by-pass featured directional and informational road signs designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, which included a typeface called Transport, sans-serif and in mixed case (upper-case letters followed by lower-case letters). The war for Britain’s road signs began in 1958, just before the opening of Britain’s first motorway, the Preston by-pass. This is the story of why so many of Britain’s street name signs look the same. Even though he wasn’t there, Cambridge-based letter cutter and sculptor David Kindersley was about to lose that war, but accidentally win a different one altogether. ![]() The exercise at Benson Airfield was one of the battles in a war fought over the way Britain’s roads should look. With his car (unbalanced atop due to the addition of a large road sign attached to its roof) aiming towards a small grandstand full of off-duty RAF airmen, all he has to do is drive at them. At Benson Airfield in south Oxfordshire, a test car driver employed by the Roads Research Laboratory is revving the engine of his Morris Oxford and preparing to release the handbrake. ![]()
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