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British road signs use specially designed lettering, and much of it is quite distinctive. Nathaniel Porter and John Prentice have now reproduced the various types of lettering from official documents, and turned them into TrueType fonts that you can download here for free.

Each font comes in a zip file with installation instructions, and an image showing some of the available characters. They are all free to download.

There used to be problems with these fonts on Mac OS and with Adobe software, but these problems have now been resolved and they should all work on any platform that accepts TrueType (.ttf) fonts.

Transport Medium

Transport is the main lettering used on British road signs, designed specifically for this purpose by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. Transport Medium is the lighter variant, which is composed of narrower strokes and used for light text on a dark background.

Transport Heavy

This is the heavier version of Transport, intended for use with dark text on a lighter background.

Transport Medium (Greek)

Greek road signs are written in Greek and Latin characters, and Transport was specially expanded by the Greek authorities to include suitable characters. This version of the Transport Medium font contains both the Latin and Greek alphabets (though only the Greek is shown in the preview above).

Motorway Permanent

Motorway is a separate set of letterforms that are only used for route numbers on motorway signs, and so it only contains numbers and a handful of letters and punctuation marks. This lighter version is for permanent signs which are white-on-blue.

Motorway Temporary

Motorway Temporary is a heavier weighting of the Motorway Permanent alphabet, and is intended for use on temporary motorway signs at roadworks which are black-on-yellow.

Pavement

This is officially the form used for painted lettering on the road surface - it's a vertically stretched version of Transport Medium. In real life, it's rarely used, as almost all lettering on the road surface in the UK is hand-painted. It contains a taller set for use on higher speed roads.

VMS

Variable Message Signs (also known as electronic or matrix signs) compose their messages with light-up panels. Exactly which lights turn on to make each letter is calculated with this lettering.

Old Road Sign Font

Before the Worboys Report introduced the current road sign designs and lettering in 1964, British road signs looked very different. This is the lettering they used. No official name is known for it, so we just call it the Old Road Sign Font.