FHWA Series fonts

The FHWA Series fonts (often informally referred to as Highway Gothic or the copyrighted typeface Interstate) are a set of sans-serif typefaces developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration and used for road signage in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, Spain, The Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil and New Zealand. The fonts were created to maximize legibility at a distance and at high speed. Versions known as Highway Gothic or Interstate, which are for sale to the general public, include punctuation marks based on a square shape. However, on signage, the official FHWA Series punctuation is based on a circular shape.

The set consists of seven fonts: "A" (the narrowest), "B", "C", "D", "E", "E(M)" (a modified version of "E" with wider strokes), and "F" (the widest). The fonts originally included only uppercase letters, with the exception of "E(M)", which was used on large expressway and freeway guide signs.

History

The typefaces are officially defined by the FHWA's Standard Alphabets for Traffic-Control Devices, originally published in 1945 (reprinted 1952). Changes to the specifications were published in 1966, 1977, and 2000. The 2000 specifications differ from earlier versions in the shapes of a few letters and in the inclusion of lowercase letters for all alphabet series.

FHWA Series A, B, C, D, E, and F were developed by the Public Roads Administration (which later became...
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