Interstate
Frere-Jones · Tobias Frere-Jones
A typeface drawn from Highway Gothic, the mid-century lettering system developed for the American Interstate Highway System, redrawn by Tobias Frere-Jones across 36 styles.
About
Frere-Jones took the unlikely source of Highway Gothic — the federal signage alphabet developed from 1949 by road engineers and sign painters — and rebuilt it as a full type family, preserving the cramped uppercase letters, the abrupt lowercase g descender and the blunt, stumbling charm of the originals. The family runs from Hairline to Ultra across Normal, Condensed and Compressed widths, with italics present across most weights. OpenType features including tabular figures, fractions and auxiliary figures are available in the core text weights.
Classification
Derived from Highway Gothic, the federal standard for American road signage, Interstate carries the open counters, uneven proportions and blunt terminals of a workhorse lettering system redrawn as a text and display typeface.