Clearview, also known as Clearview Hwy, is the name of a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

family for guide signs used on

road A road is a thoroughfare used primarily for movement of traffic. Roads differ from streets, whose primary use is local access. They also differ from stroads, which combine the features of streets and roads. Most modern roads are paved. Th ...

s in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

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Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, the

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and

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. It was developed by independent researchers with the help of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, under the supervision of the

Federal Highway Administration The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two programs, the Federal-aid Highway Program a ...

(FHWA). It was once expected to replace the FHWA typefaces in many applications, although newer studies of its effectiveness have called its benefits into question. Initial testing indicated that Clearview was 2 to 8 percent more legible in both day- and night-time viewing than the then-dominant Series E (Modified) on overhead signs, particularly benefiting older drivers, with a 6 percent increase in legibility distance. A design goal of Clearview was the reduction of irradiation effects of retroreflective sign materials. Reduced nighttime overglow or haloing was expected also to improve recognition rates for computer road sign detection. However, these tests also compared new signs in Clearview to existing, weathered signs in the existing Highway Gothic font. The new font's apparent legibility "was more due to the fact that older, worn signs were being replaced with nice, fresh, clean signs which were, naturally, more legible." Better testing also revealed that legibility was worse for negative contrast signs (dark lettering on light backgrounds) such as on speed limit and yellow warning signs.

History

The standard FHWA typefaces, developed in the 1940s, were designed to work with a system of highway signs in which almost all words are capitalized; its standard mixed-case form (Series E Modified) was designed to be most visible under the now-obsolete reflector system of button copy, which has since been superseded by

retroreflective sheeting Retroreflective sheeting is flexible Retroreflector, retroreflective material primarily used to increase the nighttime wikt:conspicuity, conspicuity of traffic signs, high-visibility clothing, and other items so they are safely and effectively vi ...

. The designers of Clearview sought to create a typeface adapted for mixed-case signage, initially expecting it would be based on an existing European sans-serif typeface. Instead, using a similar weight to the FHWA fonts, a new font was created from scratch. Two key differences are much larger counter spaces, the enclosed spaces in letters like the lower case "e" or "a", and a higher

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...

, the relative height of the lower case "x" to the upper case "X". Smaller counter spaces in the FHWA fonts reduced legibility, particularly when the letters glowed from headlight illumination at night.

Official acceptance

Clearview was granted interim approval by the FHWA for use on positive-contrast road signs (light legend on dark background, such as white on black, green, blue, brown, purple or red) on September 2, 2004, though not on negative-contrast road signs (dark legend on light background, such as black on white, yellow or orange), given its inferior legibility to the existing FHWA typefaces in these applications. The FHWA also refused to add Clearview to the 2009 MUTCD, citing lack of testing on Clearview's numerals, symbols, and narrower typefaces. In April 2014, FHWA indicated it expected to rescind Interim Approval to use Clearview in the future, eventually doing so in January 2016. Congress ordered the FHWA to reinstate the interim approval on March 28, 2018. Outside the US, Clearview has been adopted in Canada where it has been the standard typeface for signs in

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since 2006 and used for street signs in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

. Clearview has been adopted as the standard typeface for road signs in Indonesia since 2014. Since 2016, Ontario's Ministry of Transportation has started using Clearview on some signs on the

Queen Elizabeth Way The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is a 400-series highways, 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York. The highway begins at the Canada–United States border on the Pea ...

Variants

In addition to its appearance on road signage, a customized version of the ClearviewText typeface was adopted by

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

for corporate use, including advertising, used from 2006 to 2016. Since 2018,

Toyota is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...

has used another variant of ClearviewText in its advertisements. ClearviewText and ClearviewADA are versions of the typeface intended for use in general graphic design and ADA-compliant signage. An example of ClearviewADA in use is signage at

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is the primary international airport serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and the North Texas region, in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the largest hub for American Airlines, which is headquartere ...

Adoption

United States

Between 20 and 30 states have adopted the use of the typeface as of 2013. It was not the official font recommended for use by the FHWA and states were required to request interim approval from the Federal Highway Administration to use the font. On January 25, 2016, the Federal Highway Administration issued a notice in the

Federal Register The ''Federal Register'' (FR or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the government gazette, official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains government agency rules, proposed rules, and public notices. It is published every wee ...

of the agency's intent to rescind interim approval for use of the Clearview font in 30 days. FHWA discussed the current state of road signage research and concluded that "the consistent finding among all the research evaluations is that the brightness of the retroreflective sheeting is the primary factor in nighttime legibility." Even worse, significant misunderstandings and misapplications of the interim approval for Clearview were resulting in badly designed non-uniform signs that violated the uniformity central to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Accordingly, the notice concluded, "FHWA does not intend to pursue further consideration, development, or support of an alternative letter style." The rescission of the interim approval drew negative response from government officials as well as one of the typeface's designers. The FHWA reinstated the interim approval on March 28, 2018, per Division L, Title I, Section 125 of the

Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 () is a United States omnibus spending bill for the United States federal government for fiscal year 2018 enacted by the 115th United States Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump on Ma ...

Canada

The Transportation Association of Canada's MUTCD for Canada allows the use of Clearview, and the

Ministry of Transportation of Ontario The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is the provincial ministry of the Government of Ontario that is responsible for transport infrastructure and related law in Ontario, Canada. The ministry traces its roots back over a century to the 1890s, w ...

uses it for positive contrast guide signs. The Ontario transportation agency

Metrolinx Metrolinx is a transportation agency in Ontario, Canada. It is a Crown agency that manages and integrates road and public transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). It was created as the Greater Toronto Transportation Au ...

has adopted Clearview for its wayfinding design standard. Toronto has been replacing its black-on-white street signs with newer white-on-blue signs that use Clearview since 2004, with exceptions for certain older neighborhoods. British Columbia has been switching to Clearview for all signage, including regulatory and guide signage.

Indonesia

The Ministry of Transportation promulgated a regulation in 2014 to introduce new

road signs Traffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of or above roads to give instructions or provide information to road users. The earliest signs were simple wooden or stone milestones. Later, signs with directional arms were introduc ...

that would use the Clearview typeface. This new regulation was intended to meet ASEAN Economic Community standards starting in 2015. Previously, road signs in Indonesia had traditionally used FHWA Series fonts since 1993.Ministerial Regulation No. 61/1993 about Traffic Signs
. Ministry of Transportation of the Republic of Indonesia. Retrieved 7 February 2015.

Philippines

Signage in the

uses Clearview on newer signs. The numbered shields in the

Philippine highway network The Philippine highway network is a network of highway, national roads owned and maintained by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and organized into three classifications according to their function or purpose: national primar ...

use Clearview.

References

External links

FHWA page about the Clearview typeface

Official site
{{Traffic signs Government typefaces Humanist sans-serif typefaces Road signs in the United States Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2004 Typefaces designed by James Montalbano