E
Story
Fran Sans – font inspired by San Francisco light rail displays
Wow, the props to the author for digging deep!

> Looking inside of the display, I found labels identifying the make and model. The signs were designed and manufactured by Trans-Lite, Inc., a company based in Milford, Connecticut that specialised in transport signage from 1959 until its acquisition by the Nordic firm Teknoware in 2012. After lots of amateur detective work, and with the help from an anonymous Reddit user in a Connecticut community group, I was connected with Gary Wallberg, Senior Engineer at Trans-Lite and the person responsible for the design of these very signs back in 1999.

Few years back, we had a work thread about this exact Muni Metro font and the designers brought up segmented types. We never got as far as the author in finding the source, but did bring up other systems with similar typefaces.

NYC has their own called R142A: https://www.nyctransitforums.com/topic/55346-r142a-mosaic-lc...

And here's one inspired by Spain's transit system: https://aresluna.org/segmented-type/

R142A is simply the name of a type of subway car. The NYCT identifies the car by contract number which is increasing (bigger number means more recent). The latest is R211 in three variants (R211T, R211S, R211A).
Typography nerds are some of my favourite nerds.

Font specimen pages are so often screaming with design language and intention, they push and prod to evoke and present.

Maybe the secret has something to do with the lack of priority to the actual content; just present the font gosh-darn!

Looks nicely executed within the confines of the inspiration. very cool

Andrew Glassner's Notebook: Recreational Computer Graphics is a really neat book (I especially like the tiles that can add numbers). The author's site is https://glassner.com/computer-graphics/

Chapter 6 in the book ( https://archive.org/details/andrewglassnersn0000glas/page/98... ) Signs of Significance starts with 7 segment displays to the 14 segment and 5x7...

He then goes on to the 66 segment Vienna underground font and an 83 segment font he saw in an elevator at a Siggraph conference in Orlando ... and then concludes with his own 55 element mosaic.

--

Also, Adam Savage's Tested - https://youtu.be/eKCcqlJnZcA (3 days ago) looking at https://www.kellianderson.com/books/alphabetinmotion.html

At 7:00 into the video is C & D pages looking at the modularity of a font.

(the section "U & V" about 3/4 down the page has the modular components for Kombinations-Schrift https://www.moma.org/collection/works/2724 which was also looked at at 22:00 into the video.

Someone made a JavaScript version of Glassner's 55 segment design along with a dozen others that's fun to play with:

https://aresluna.org/segmented-type/

  • ·
  • 9 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
As a native that absolutely cringes at "San Fran" ... I still got mad respect for that awesome name. Well done.
Hey, I made this font. I really ummed and ahhed over the name for this exact same reason. But in the end it was just too clever to pass up. Thanks for moving past it, haha.
what you chose was 100% wayy too good to pass up, that wouldve been the first thing pun-lovers pointed out if you chose anything else. because ITS RIGHT THERE
I also approve of the cleverness. Correct choice not to pass it up.

I also have a soft spot for typography weenies, and appreciation for well thought out typography in an age when it seems like it’s becoming rarer and rarer. Great to see this on HN.

Bonus points for cleverness.
[dead]
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I'll be sure to call it "Frisco" instead.

+1 on the awesome name though.

As a SoCal person, I made this to piss off some friends: https://imgur.com/a/FclJYov
Sans Francisco
A silent router: Sans Fancisco
  • zjp
  • ·
  • 6 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
That's fine, it's what people from the east and south sides call it.
I've always found that cringe to be a strange shibboleth. AFAICT everyone has to summarize with the bay area instead, which I find even more comic having grown up on a coast, aka a bay area.
My theory for why "San Fran" is looked down upon is that the person saying it is perceived as making a claim to status: 'I am so cool and hip that I am on familiar terms with "San Fran".'

But shortening San Francisco to San Fran is both very obvious, and betrays a cheap attempt at sophistication that the soul of SF rejects.

SF feels like a transitory city as multiple successive waves of people drift in and out. That also contribute to why a shibboleth like this gets a lot of airtime. The episode probably recurs weekly in bars all over the city as someone who's just moved here calls it "San Fran", only to be corrected by someone who's been here for just a little longer.

Well, this is THE Bay Area, where we live in THE city, drive on THE 101, and eat in THE Chinatown.... wait...

Funny enough, though, it wasn't until I moved here 15+ years ago that it struck me how odd it is to call it "the Bay Area" and expect people to know what that means. Nonetheless, sportscasters do it. Musicians do it. All other bay areas are just areas around bays...

Eddie Izzard was joking in 1998 about the "The" and the prohibited names for The City (https://youtu.be/QRB_GhLXCds?si=R4kYkodzvYDxe33H&t=276), so it's probably been like this for many decades thence!
> drive on THE 101

excuuuuuuse you? It's "drive on 101" in NorCal :P

The bay area is more than SF. If you mean San Francisco and don't want to say the whole name, you use either 'SF' or 'the city.'

I'm not sure why it's a strange shibboleth? Not every name has to be shortened, and if you are going to shorten names, not every short form is acceptable. I don't know where "San Fran" came from, any more than "Cali", neither of which are used by locals, but it just doesn't feel respectable. It's not the name of the city.

When I lived in SF I walked past this street art a couple of times a week and got a smile.

https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/eugenia-avenue-prospec...

Ha, that’s great!
"SF ... It's not the name of the city."

Your words ... 8)

I think it honesty just boils down to: It sounds bad.
You've never met an Alexander that despises being called "Alex"?
No but they all seem upset when I call them Alexa
No. Why would you "despise" being referred to?

My first name is Jonathan, I generally get referred to as (int al) Jon, Jonny, Jo, or John (bloody silent letters).

As it turns out, until I was 20 I thought my name was spelt Jonathon. I got a copy of my birth cert to get a student loan and discovered the "truth" - even my passport was wrong and my parents had to sort out the first few of those and they should have known better! I was born in 1970 and no one noticed that I misspelt my own first name for 20 years.

It’s been a while since I grabbed this: https://blog.ryjones.org/2006/10/21/Welcome-to-the-Bay-Area
It’s funny how most SF posts will have an “as a native” say that. You don’t really get that from London as much. Strangely parochial attribute of the culture. I wonder which other cities have such populations. NYC has a big “transplant” vs. “native” thing going on so maybe it’s just American, but I think people do it in Vancouver too. Though Canadians just kind of copy Americans for the most part.

I’ve taken to calling the city San Fran as a result. Sometimes I enjoy a good EssEffOh or Frisco too. Really gets the audience going.

NYC is the only other one I can think of, though I’m sure there are many. Maybe LA as well? It’s just that the transplants outnumber the natives by a large amount. The house I live in now was fruit orchards when I was born.
  • ·
  • 3 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
When I was a child the front side displays on new Muni buses used to use these probably solonoid driven LED arrays. If you sat under one you could here this clattering sound that sounded kinda like rain each time the display changed. This discussion is bringing back old memories of those.

The older Breda trains and I think buses also used to use backlit paper rolls for signs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/T_Third_... Those were significantly more readable

They certainly did. The SFMTA also showed these to me and explained that not only were they extremely temperamental, but it also cost about $3k to print one of the curtains with the special barcode that prompts the curtains to rotate.
Assuming you mean one of these guys:

https://cptdb.ca/wiki/images/6/60/San_Francisco_MUNI_8001-a....

https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/File:San_Francisco_MUNI_8110...

The signs made quite a racket, but so did the buses (well, the first model I linked to).

Fun fact: When Muni first rolled out the digital signs on their newer Bredas the set the signs to rotate through three different pieces of information. So for 2/3 of the time you had no indication of where the train was headed.

Bonus fun fact: the cloth rolls have a variety of routes and destinations that never came to be.

FYI no lower case, also "contact the author for licensing". (The article is a neat story of digging into the history of the displays which are about to be going out of service, as well as some practical aspects of the font design - it's just not casually available.)
Honestly, I wasn't expecting this font to go anywhere, and then the SF Chronicle reached out, which has been lovely. Anyone who emails me can have a copy, I just haven't made an easy download link. I've thought about it since, but actually it's way nicer to hear from people and hear about what they're making. It is a community-driven project, and this slower form of distribution feels closer to my original intent. :)
This post ends with a beautiful poem set in Frans Sans

OUTSIDE MY LIFE, INSIDE THE DREAM.

FALLING UP THE STAIRS, INTO THE STREET.

LET THE CABLE CAR CARRY ME.

STRAIGHT OUT OF TOWN, INTO THE SEA.

PAST THE DAHLIAS AND THE SELF-DRIVING CARS.

THE CHURCH OF 8 WHEELS. THE LOWER HAIGHT BARS.

THE PEAK HOUR SPRAWL. THE KIDS IN THE PARK.

THE SLANTING HOUSES. THE BAY AFTER DARK.

MY WINDOW, MY OWN SILVER SCREEN.

I FOLLOW WHERE THE FOG TAKES ME.

By MADDY CARRUCAN

I moved to SF this year and I love this poem.

Q: is the church of 8 wheels really a popular destination? Or is this the poet's bias towards the haight and hayes areas?

For me, Mission Dolores represents "classic SF" and is the area I'm fondest of -- and contrarily, the Salesforce Park and the surrounding area is the pinnacle of tech & capitalism (and b2b saas.)

  • kens
  • ·
  • 7 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I appreciate that the author talked to various people (technician, engineer) and visited the shop rather than just doing online research. It's rare for people to go to the effort of in-person research.
  • aoki
  • ·
  • 10 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
> Back at the SFMTA, Armando told me the Breda vehicles are being replaced, and with them their destination displays will be swapped for newer LED dot-matrix units that are more efficient and easier to maintain. By the end of 2025 the signs that inspired Fran Sans will disappear from the city, taking with them a small but distinctive part of the city’s voice.

:-(

If the dot-matrix is fine enough, you could still render any font properly. Plus you can add emoticons :)
Ah that's so neat! I've noticed some of those details before, in how some of the segments of the display are shaped in various ways that lets them draw characters with smooth edges, in ways you wouldn't be able to do with a display where the segments' shapes are homogeneous.

As soon as I saw the first photo, though, I was a little sad to realize that it was of the old-style trains that are being phased out. The author notes this near the end, but I think that the trains are actually completely phased out as of a few weeks ago, maybe even before this article was posted.

For UK readers, this is eerily similar to the typeface originally used on the "Thames Turbo" trains (class 165/166) from their construction in the 1990s until a refurb about five years ago - I could believe it was the same manufacturer. Some photos:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:166207_DMCO_Interior...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Rail_Cla...

i believe that 3x5 display is quite common and might not have its origin in SF
It seems identical to the displays used in NJ Transit trains.
NJ Transit uses 105-segment displays. Not only do they include lowercase letters, but the uppercase and numbers are noticeably different from MUNI's 38-segment displays.
I like the underlying commitment to design in the original displays. Seemingly the double height slants on the bottom are solely for rendering the letter V. They have no other purpose than for that letter.
I'm the designer of Fran Sans and I love that you noticed this detail in the original displays!!! :)
  • ·
  • 3 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
  • agg23
  • ·
  • 9 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Beware that pressing the back arrow twice takes you to unexpected naked photos.
This is the second comment I've seen on HN today about the back button having unexpected results on a site.

I'm so confused -- I use Chrome on a Mac and my back button works entirely normally. No naked photos, sorry to report.

Is this a real thing that Chrome isn't susceptible to? Or are people just making jokes?

Here you go: https://emilysneddon.com/tinn

NSFW, obviously, but also not all that titillating. (It's artsy B&W photography of women in their bathrooms.)

They mean the left arrow key on your keyboard.
  • ·
  • 7 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Use the arrow key. It moves the carousel, landing on some scandalizing artistic photos.
Oh, thank you. I've never heard of the left arrow key being called the back arrow.
Not much scandalising in that IMO. Very arty photos. Would anyone find this offensive?
I don’t think any reasonable person would, but there are contexts in which unexpected partial nudity might be troublesome. If one’s a librarian or teacher browsing the web from a very public desk where people can see my screen, I’d appreciate the warning.
Are they naked photos you've seen before?
I have seen these throughout the US and Europe and been fascinated by them. Penn Station has (had? been a while) a big one with more segments per character. I’ve been trying forever to find the name of this particular style of segmented displays and get more info on them. The closest I could find is “mosaic display.”

Love this article!

Signed, someone who has an obsession with segmented displays

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-flap_display

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-disc_display

When I was last at Penn Station in the 2010s their departure board was a mosaic LCD like the article, not a split-flap display:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Penn_Sta...

I do miss the split flap displays at the Boston and Providence Amtrak stations though…

It's probably Reitberger's 38-segment AFA alphanumeric LCD:

https://www.reitberger.de/English/Large%20displays/Alphanume...

https://www.reitberger.de/English/Broadsheet/Prospekt_GA_AFA...

These are very common here.

The Penn Station passenger display was, according to the NYT, segmented LCD glass made by Signature Technologies in Arizona.

It had 43 segments (each character had a 13 segment column, 17 segments column, then another 13 segment column that was a mirror of the first). You can see the segment shape on the original sign:

https://media.wired.com/photos/59327db4aef9a462de983397/3:2/...

The same segment design was used on in Spain along with a more angular version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210602143217im_/https://pbs.tw...

I would love to build a programmatic version of this font defined by an array of shapes (full square, triangle, rounded corner, pizza, and notch), and rotations, but I think even that would be a somewhat offense of the license, so I'm not going to publish it.

An array of those would spell out most of the symbols. Some of her characters violate this pattern though so it only approximates most of the symbols.

If lilsneddz responds with yes, I'd love to publish the code so people can make public interactive displays with her font design.

I think a system like this would make it easier to prototype lowercase and other international symbols though!

Are you joking? this sounds sick. Please go ahead!!! I think I need to update my website so it's more clear how open this is, haha!
wait really?? ok!! I thought I would actually build a typography editor around it, maybe if you click a cell it would rotate symbols and/or orientations. Open source of course!

This is what I'll do instead of spending time with family over thanksgiving :P

check out https://fontstruct.com/ and https://glyphdrawing.club/ for a few editors that work this way (i made glyphdrawing.club). but please make one for this!
“I really like fun. So I made my own font editor.” —- tom7

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qTBAW-Eh0tM

  • ·
  • 2 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
There are higher detail versions of these LCD displays like those used on the NJ Transit Comet cars: https://www.flickr.com/photos/recluse26/286211358/

Should be possible to get a passable @ on those.

That was my first thought as well. I've spent time on those cars on the Coast Line. They used to indicate the next stop, but it broke at some point. I don't ride much anymore. I'm not surprised what's pictured is NJ TRANSIT, the fallback. Would be nice to have faster trains someday. Until then, crack a beer and enjoy the ride.
"Unlike New York, Chicago or L.A., which each have one, maybe two, San Francisco and the greater Bay Area have over two dozen"

Whaaa...? Los Angeles has a whole rat's nest of overlapping agencies, (mostly different cities and like 4 kinds of train for some reason)

I had not heard of Glyphs, the tool the author used. I used to use Fontographer long ago.

https://glyphsapp.com/learn/recommendation:get-started

It's a great article!

Also a Fontographer user here. That's how you know you did font design in the last 90s.
Be honest though, did the name come first?
Haha, hi, it's me, Emily, the designer of this font. It actually didn't come first! And strangely finding an available name was almost the hardest part.
I'm struggling with deciphering the punctuation symbol between the £ and the |. Any help? (Possibly the @ symbol but my reading of the text suggests there isn't a glyph for it, but maybe I'm wrong there)
I think it is @ given the context of the next paragraph, where they complain that @ doesn't work well in the grid.
This is difital archiving and will be absorbed by AI and seen by aliens in another galaxy thousands of years from now in a borg cube.
Thoroughly dank. Very well done and interesting write up.
For some reason when I read this font in the digital samples, it feels a bit Soviet? I subconsciously expect the text to be in cyrillic.
I would invite everyone to try selecting text on the linked page to see the most low-key awesome effect ever.
I am not expert but I really like the font. It does a lot for such a primitive display. Makes me wonder why we used to have those bad 80s 90s alphanumeric LCD displays in most places too cheap for pixels when they could have done this.
>On route, train operators punch the code into a control panel at the back of the display, and the LCD blocks light on specific segments of the grid to build each letter

I always thought those were mechanical displays with little mechanical shutters that moved to display the segments... like these:

https://youtu.be/Gj_mTp6Ypzk

Never knew they were LCD.

  • ·
  • 2 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
This is the spitting image of the "FontStruct" tool, which I have fond memories of! I wonder if there was some overlap.

I second the sentiments here about typography nerds. This is very very cool.

Are the light rail displays ever sold anywhere?
I wonder what's happening to the displays that're being retired! I hope someone can nab them from the waste stream...
Hi, I'm Emily the designer of Fran Sans. One of the Breda cars is going to the California State Railroad Museum, and it has the displays in it. I also suggested to the Letterform Archive in SF that they may have interest in it. I do know they've archived some of the NY subway curtain displays, so I think it's only fair they save one of these in their collections too.
I like it because my first name is Frans
That was a great read with a ton of fun little bread crumbs to follow. Tipo Velez/Super Veloz gets a mention, and it’s definitely worthy of a diversion if you haven’t seen it before.

For all the modern handwringing about SF, it really is a hell of a city with a fascinating history.

For commercial and non-commercial use of FRAN SANS, please get in touch: emily@......com
Have been in font picking mode recently so this was a relevant enough distraction. Excellent read!
Start here for more of the actual font: https://emilysneddon.com/fransans
Both of these pages seem to me like they're designed for mobile-only usage.

I'm sitting here with a 4k screen, browser maximized, and all text is, like, huuuuge!

And the worst part? You can't zoom! Seems kind of user-hostile to me …

  • pabs3
  • ·
  • 5 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Disabling CSS helps.
i was literally just looking for some kind of font for my personal site and this is super cool.
So ... hard to read then?
  • ·
  • 5 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
> For commercial and non-commercial use of FRAN SANS, please get in touch: emily@emilysneddon.com

Cool article, pretty lame that the person creating a recreation of a public-funded font is gatekeeping it behind their email, though.

Ouch, that was certainly not my intention. I didn't expect this to be shared around, and hadn't considered the best way to make it available. It's open, and I've shared it for free with every single person who has emailed me. I feel like this slower form of distribution is closer to the original intent of the font as I've been able to connect and chat with lots of incredible SF locals and Muni fans in the process. :)

I made Fran Sans for fun in my own spare time which was a lot of work. I do want to add that all fonts are inspired by work that came before it... yet at some point, the font becomes your own. Yes, Fran Sans is based on the Trans-Lite signage, however when I digitised it, I had to make a number of my own personal design decisions along the way which makes this work my own. Particularly the addition of different styles and characters that were never made for the original signage.

I hoped my intent came through in my commitment to researching and sharing this piece of local history that would have otherwise been lost as there was nothing to be found online when I started this journey.

Hope this clears up my intention, I'd love to send you a copy if you're interested, and I'm open to hearing your distribution ideas.

You just gotta get used to a knee jerk “you’re open sourcing wrong” reaction you’re gonna get from a community of people who are accustomed to it all being done in a certain way (namely, that it’s generally open and copyable without interaction with -gasp- humans). You’re doing fine and your responses have been perfect imo.
I agree with the hamburglar (lol) you did awesome work and you owe the internet nothing. the 3d printing community is rife with "stl please" expectations that everyone wants to share everything and it should all be free. Give it away if you can, but I think its important to have some value to the creative work like this that is done.

> I've shared it for free with every single person who has emailed me.

Excited and waiting :) I think it's going to make really cool pen plotter art