London is a city of constant change. It evolves, grows, morphs and adapts. But within that change, some things stay more or less fixed. One thing that has stayed just so for almost four decades is the use of the adapted version of the Albertus typeface on the City of London’s street nameplates. Along with Westminster’s iconic nameplates, the City’s signs have become emblematic of London.

However, despite appearances, that Albertus lettering has itself been morphing and changing.

George Wright, Project Manager, Major Projects & Programmes, City Transportation at the City of London Corporation, got in touch at the beginning of April, about the fact that the recent street nameplates in the City of London weren’t looking quite right. He had noticed that the font was a lighter weight than on the original signs, and wondered if I had come across the original design guidelines anywhere during my research for my book, London Street Signs.

It’s rare for someone in George’s position to have such a refined eye for type, but he has form, having commissioned, in a previous role at the London Borough of Lambeth, beautiful sets of signage right across that borough, as well as heritage revival signs in Norwood. Both projects, as well as the City of London street nameplates, are featured in my book.

During the course of my research, the late great Phil Baines had mentioned that the original Corporation of London Corporate Identity Sign System Manual (1988) could be found at St Bride Library. The manual was created by Chris Sharville and David Laker of Laker Sharville Design, as part of the wider corporate identity for the City of London overseen by John Ward at Charles Barker City. It specified the lettering for use on all the City’s nameplates – an amended version of Berthold Wolpe’s Albertus, referred to only as the ‘Special Alphabet’.

“To respond to the particular needs of the Sign System a special typeface was designed for the Corporation. It is based on Albertus No. 4 but the letterform was modified and refined to improve its legibility and method of reproduction at the large sizes demanded by the project. Directional arrows matching the letterform were also added to the standard characters.”

Intriguingly, I’m yet to find any other reference to Albertus No. 4, so I wonder if that was a typo? Or perhaps No. 4 was a Photo-Lettering version? All of Monotype’s typefaces were given numbers, in order of production, and the original version of Albertus was Albertus Titling No. 324, released in 1935 and featuring titling capitals only.

That was followed by Albertus No. 481, with both upper and lower case letters, as well as Albertus Light No. 534, and Albertus Bold Titling No. 538.

The manual also includes a very specific spacing system, which set the all caps street names and postal districts with pleasingly tight letter spacing – close, but not touching.

“When looking at a group of characters – words or lines of text – as a single coherent image, the spacing between the individual characters and words plays a crucial part in establishing the typographical style. This is all the more important in the case of large size characters such as those used on signs. It is therefore vital that the spacing is constant and strictly controlled, and to this end, the standard system of accurately controlling the letter spacing must always be used.”

I sent George copies of the Sign System Manual pages, helping clarify the specifics of the original lettering design. 

Significantly, the manual states that a “Master Artwork has been produced which includes a standard spacing system from which a film for photographic setting has been made.” Unfortunately, that photographic film of the Special Alphabet, if still around, couldn’t be found in the Corporation’s archives. A digitised version of the Special Alphabet, from 2004, was found a bit later, but without any kerning information (the space between individual pairs of letters).

The existing street nameplates around the city are quite a mix of weights and styles, having been produced by various companies over the years since the original signs and manual were first introduced. (Nameplates are expected to last about 30 years, but of course only if they’re not stolen, defaced or damaged.) Here are just a few, showing how much variation there has been in lettering, setting and even punctuation.

The sign above is set well, though one might prefer to keep ‘King William Street’ on a single line.

The weight of the lettering is too light on the signs above, and the letters too widely spaced.

Note the variations between two ostensibly identical signs here: single line to two line setting, size of the bracketed name, the shape of the brackets, and the position of the apostrophe.

And here in a rare adhesive sign, affixed to a window on the side of 101 Queen Victoria Street, the wrong character is used for the apostrophes (flat and vertical where they should be angled and curved), in the wrong place on ‘St. Pauls'’ (the vista is of St Paul’s Cathedral). These adhesive signs have a slightly shorter life span than the enamel ones, so this can be fixed relatively easily (this photograph is from 2016, and the sign is looking much worse for wear now).

It looks like the nameplates in use around the City use a mix of the correct lettering and at least four other versions of Albertus and similar typefaces, including Flareserif 821 (Bitstream’s version of Albertus), and a free version, AO28 by URW++.

A modern version of Albertus, Albertus Medium, was most recently being used by the current manufacturer AJ Wells (the wonderful folks on the Isle of Wight who, as well as making the City of London’s nameplates, make all the London Underground signs). This was notably lighter than the Special Alphabet, and without the tight spacing specified in the manual – which AJ Wells hadn’t had sight of. 

George asked if there was any way of getting a new version of the Special Alphabet digitised. I knew just the person – type designer Toshi Omagari. We’d first met when we were both speakers on a panel at the launch event for the Wolpe Collection – an updated set of five of Berthold Wolpe’s typefaces, including Albertus, all digitised and updated by Toshi. (I’d been invited to be on the panel because of a piece I’d written about the use of Albertus in the TV show The Prisoner.)

Toshi set about creating a newly digitised font for the City of London, matching the shapes of the original Special Alphabet, but with subtle tweaks to make it work perfectly, and with tailored kerning.

Toshi completed the new font, COL Sign, over the summer, and has written in depth about it. As well as the kerning, it has slightly thickened round strokes, the C and G are more balanced, the W is slightly wider, and some of the flared strokes emphasised just a tad. The joints on strokes of the lowercase have also been beefed up a bit, the ear on the g styled to match the rest of the font, and the @ symbol has been crafted to be more stylistically appropriate.

Berthold Wolpe, who designed Albertus originally, was a Jewish German émigré who left Germany soon after the Nazis took power, and he became a British citizen in 1947. As Toshi self-effacingly notes on his site, it’s highly appropriate that two immigrants have helped define part of the look of the city:

“I think it is a testament to London’s diversity that its iconic typeface was originally designed by an immigrant, and updated by another (twice: Albertus Nova and this typeface), which I am extremely proud of, regardless of how small my contribution may be.”

It’s a small but wonderful thing to see a design like this restored and revived with such care and attention. And hopefully it can now become a fixed point within our ever evolving city.