Road Sign Fonts

I notice fonts. I can't help myself. I don't know their names, but I recognize their uses. I can definitely tell when they are different. While driving on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, I noticed that the green exit signs have a very distinctive small "a."

I said to Deborah, look at the a's on the exit signs. And here's why I love my wife. She said, I know.

This began a rabbit hole Google search on road sign fonts. I watched a video about the transition from Highway Gothic to Clearview and which states have adopted these new fonts and which have flipflopped back to the old one. Yep, standard internet research.

These signs in Connecticut don't use either one of those. But here's more information from a photo caption about the signs than I was looking for. Three cheers for obsessives on the web.

"The jagged edges on these guide signs is a motif that appeared in the late 1990s or early 2000s, a nod to the original rough-cut wooden signs erected when the Parkway opened in 1938 through 1940. The font (looks like ITC Stone Sans demibold) is not historically accurate, but differs from the FHWA E(M) standard for all other 'big green signs' in the state."