Transport (the typeface) would eventually become ubiquitous on Britain’s road signs and beyond. ↑ Before Kinneir/Calvert’s work, British road signs tended to look something like the lower one in this photograph (although other varieties existed). It was the first time mixed case lettering had been used on British road signs, which up until then had used all-capitals wording. The by-pass featured directional and informational road signs designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, which included a typeface called Transport, sans-serif and in mixed case (upper-case letters followed by lower-case letters). The war for Britain’s road signs began in 1958, just before the opening of Britain’s first motorway, the Preston by-pass. This is the story of why so many of Britain’s street name signs look the same. Even though he wasn’t there, Cambridge-based letter cutter and sculptor David Kindersley was about to lose that war, but accidentally win a different one altogether. The exercise at Benson Airfield was one of the battles in a war fought over the way Britain’s roads should look. With his car (unbalanced atop due to the addition of a large road sign attached to its roof) aiming towards a small grandstand full of off-duty RAF airmen, all he has to do is drive at them. At Benson Airfield in south Oxfordshire, a test car driver employed by the Roads Research Laboratory is revving the engine of his Morris Oxford and preparing to release the handbrake.
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