Inspiration has been drawn from pictures of outdated hearth engines and Victorian horse drawn carriages in London Fireplace Brigade’s archives.
Kind foundry The Foundry Sorts and Studio Sutherl& have collaborated on a brand new headline typeface for London Fireplace Brigade (LFB) utilizing a 3D drop shadow model.
The typeface pays homage to the hand-painted lettering seen on outdated hearth engines and this informs the wordmark of the organisation.
LFB’s earlier typeface, Foundry Sans, was created by The Foundry Sorts’ co-director and designer David Quay and kind designer Freda Sack in 1990. Greater than 20 years later, LFB approached the studio once more because it wanted a “headline typeface” with “distinctive options bespoke to LFB”, in line with the foundry’s co-director and designer Stuart de Rozario. Studio Sutherl& grew to become concerned within the 18-month venture on the finish of 2021 to assist with its improvement.
After “thorough analysis into the LFB archives”, Rozario says he discovered that most of the outdated hearth engines, hearth stations, and even Victorian horse drawn carriages featured 3D lettering. Utilizing this as a place to begin, Rozario determined to make use of related methods “with a contemporary twist” to design LFB’s bespoke Fireplace Brigade Headline typeface.
The outdated designs bore similarities to what Rozario envisioned for the brand new typeface. He says, “We needed to create one thing robust and daring that has a presence to it but additionally needed it to seem caring and never too aggressive, so it echoes the character of what the hearth brigade does.”
The geometric grotesque kind model goals to embody the traits of the LFB group; “distinctive however acquainted, human and approachable, robust and strong”, says Rozario. He provides that it was “properly obtained” by the LFB group.
Rozario explains how making use of the 3D drop shadow model to rounded characters, like O and S, proved to be “technically tough”, as pixelated areas had been showing across the edges. Realigning the letters and “modifying the shapes” ultimately solved the issue, Rozario provides.
The brand new typeface can be used throughout the hearth stations, on merchandise and in LFB’s new museum, which is deliberate for a website on Albert Embankment. A brand new working man icon in the identical drop shadow model may even be utilized throughout bodily and digital areas.
Pink, yellow and gold is “synonymous” with indicators and lettering on hearth engines, says Rozario, which is why these colors are used extensively throughout the brand new purposes of the typeface, together with on the outside and inside of Shoreditch Fireplace Station.
Since Fireplace Brigade Headline can be used predominantly as a graphic system, LFB additionally required an replace to their unique font, Foundry Sans, which can now be used throughout communications, particularly longer kind writing.. The Foundry Sorts crafted a “extra accessible bespoke font” referred to as Fireplace Brigade Sans, says Rozario.
He provides “legibility is emphasised” on this new font, utilizing the instance of the letter l to exhibit how sure characters now characteristic slight curves which intention to make them extra distinct.
The brand new typefaces had been launched in an exhibition at Shoreditch Fireplace Station throughout London Design Competition 2022, that may run till this weekend. Greater than 40 studios have contributed to the exhibitions, deciphering the brand new headline typeface into posters and hazard indicators.
Supple Studio created a poster titled Love and Ladders, which depicts a model of the working man holding a pink ladder made up of three hashtags within the Fireplace Brigade Headline typeface. The hashtag is a part of “a collection of alternate glyphs”, in line with Studio Sutherland associate Jim Sutherland.
Graphic design studio Alphabetical’s poster options the quantity 77 within the headline font with textual content inside in Fireplace Brigade Sans, detailing the variety of seconds that it takes LFB to answer emergency calls.
Worcestershire-based carpet producer Brintons designed a bespoke Quickweave wool carpet for the exhibition, which options the working man icon alongside the common hearth exit arrow image within the 3D drop shadow model. In addition to being a artistic interpretation of the brand new typeface, the carpet can also be meant to attract consideration to the truth that wool as a naturally fire-retardant materials as a consequence of its excessive water and nitrogen content material. One other advantage of wool is that it doesn’t produce smoke or fumes when set alight, which is among the fundamental causes of significant well being points following a fireplace.
