Marking the centennial of Johnston, the London transport network’s iconic typeface, Monotype and Transport for London (TfL) has unveiled the forthcoming release of the newly designed Johnston100 typeface. 

Remastered by Monotype to bring back the original flavour of the Johnston design developed 100 years ago, Johnston100 expands the palette of the original typeface to embrace both contemporary typographic trends and new digital requirements.

Johnston100 includes five weights of the design, including two brand new contemporary weights: hairline and thin, and will start to appearing across the TfL network later this year. 

Johnston was originally designed by  Edward Johnston  in 1916 and is instantly recognisable as the graphic language of London. Used across all trains and buses, station signage and wayfinding, Johnston is ingrained in the fabric of the city.

Jon Hunter, Head of Design, TfL, said: “The Johnston typeface speaks of London like no other. It has been around 100 years. It will be around 100 more years if not longer. We just want to make sure it’s used consistently across all our branding touchpoints and across all future branding platforms we may have, so we asked Monotype to go back to the original principles of Johnston, and create a digital typeface using the DNA of its truly iconic predecessor.

“With social media becoming more prevalent, essential even, certain characters – such as the “hashtag” and the “at” symbol have become ingrained into the very fabric of modern life. I like to think that if Johnston was posed the challenge today of creating a digital version of the font, he would have arrived at a very similar conclusion.”