A typeface designed to mimic the National Park Service signs that are carved using a router bit

National Park Service typeface

Fast Company: If you’ve ever been to a National Park, chances are you’ve come across signage with the same distinctive lettering. The type, which features rounded edges carved into wood in all caps, has become an icon of the National Parks system.

[Jeremy] Shellhorn, who was on sabbatical from his current job as an associate professor of design at the University of Kansas, was redesigning the park’s newspaper and wanted to include the type found on National Park signs. But he soon discovered there was no digital typeface because the letters are simply formed with a CNC router in the park’s sign shop, chiseled into wood. The shape of the letters were determined by the size of the router bit.

It doesn’t really exist as a typeface unless a sign is made.

Available for anyone to download for free, the typeface comes in four weights: light, regular, heavy, and outline.

See also

• Diglû: a pictographic typeface for archeology — Diglû consists of 440 characters and 404 pictograms developed for the analysis and mediation of archaeological finds.
• Anatomia: a quirky grotesk typeface — grotesk typeface born from the skeleton of an old Scotch Roman used in an anatomy book printed in the early 20th century.
• Inkwell: a typeface for expressive writing — A tiny universe of fonts that combines the informality of handwriting, the expressiveness of lettering, and the versatility of type.