The Polish road signs typeface () is a geometrical

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

designed for use on Polish road signs, according to Attachment 1 of ''Regulation on detailed technical conditions for road signs and signals as well as road safety devices and conditions for their placement on roads''. The regulation defines a construction of digits, all of the letters of

Polish alphabet The Polish alphabet ( Polish: , ) is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography. It is based on the Latin alphabet but includes certain letters (9) with diacritics: the stroke (acute accent or bar) ...

and the letter V (not including Q and X), and the

punctuation marks Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisti ...

hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...

, round brackets,

comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...

, full stop (period) and

exclamation mark The exclamation mark (also known as exclamation point in American English) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show wikt:emphasis, emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks ...

. The typeface was created by Marek Sigmund, whose project, commissioned by the state authorities in 1975, was to replace the former road signage typeface while the ''Instruction about road signs and signals'' () was being implemented. The typeface was designed in six weeks. According to the designer's assumptions, the typeface included creating text on boards by using the freehand and stencil techniques. Sigmund's specifications included glyphs that appear cut-off or oversized (such as the flat right edge on lowercase "e" and capital "G") and a purely geometric approach to letter design; in general, Polish signage uses large letters to ensure readability.

Digitized versions

There are five

fonts In movable type, metal typesetting, a font is a particular #Characteristics, size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) inclu ...

that imitate the road signs typeface. Two of them are available as

non-commercial A non-commercial (also spelled noncommercial) activity is an activity that is not carried out in the interest of Profit (economics), profit. The opposite is Commerce, commercial, something that primarily serves profit interests and is focused on bu ...

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

and one is available as

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

: * Liternictwo Drogowe – distributed by the company Centrum Rozwoju Explotrans S.A., which cooperates with Ministry of Infrastructure. It completely matches the Regulation, and is meant mainly for the enterprises that produce road signs. * Tablica drogowa – created in 2001 by Grzegorz Klimczewski. This version has all the glyphs that are defined in the Regulation and also additional ones (including ''Q'' and ''X'' letters). Some unused glyphs, such as (

quotation mark Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the sam ...

question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...

percent sign The percent sign (sometimes per cent sign in British English) is the symbol used to indicate a percentage, a number or ratio as a fraction (mathematics), fraction of 100. Related signs include the permille (per thousand) sign and the Basis p ...

), have been replaced by arrows. At first, the font was distributed commercially, but currently it is non-commercial freeware. * Drogowskaz – created in 2006 by Emil Wojtacki. Apart from the glyphs defined in the Regulation, it includes many more, designed in style of the original typeface, such as

scribal abbreviations Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mecha ...

and

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

used in various languages. The font is distributed as non-commercial freeware. * W droge — created in 2011 by Open Source Publishing, a secondhand tracing of the typeface from real-world signage in

Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...

. It is distributed under a

permissive free software license A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, ...

. * Sigmund Pro — created in 2022 by Mateusz Machalski inspired from Polish road signage typeface and had 9 weights (Thin, Extra Light, Ultra Light, Light, Regular, Medium, Semi Bold, Bold, Heavy) with italics.

Gallery

File:Bielanka.jpg, Polish and

Lemko Lemkos (; ; ; ) are an ethnic group inhabiting the Lemko Region (; ) of Carpathian Ruthenia, Carpathian Rus', an ethnographic region in the Carpathian Mountains and Carpathian Foothills, foothills spanning Ukraine, Slovakia, and Poland. Lemkos ...

bilingual place-name sign in Bielanka File:Oleksze1.jpg, Polish and Belarusian bilingual place-name sign in Oleksze File:Znak IIA-20 (Таможная) (1975).svg, Road sign B-32 "stop — customs control" in Polish and

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

References

{{Traffic signs Display typefaces Geometric sans-serif typefaces Government typefaces Grotesque sans-serif typefaces