Font used on departure boards

[ProbablyIdiot]

Hello,
I'm working on a project recreating the departure boards seen in many major stations in the UK. I have managed to slightly modified this font's regular version to create a font close enough to the font used in the body text for me to be happy with. However, I'm struggling to find a font that accurately matches the font used for the destination name, time and platform number at the top (see image). Does anybody know of a font that matches this? Thanks in advanced for any help.

 

[Hapiland]

I looked around for pixel looking fonts which are similar, searching "pixel" on https://www.dafont.com/ brings up many where certain details are correct but many other details are wrong (the 9 may be right, but the font is all capitalized)

It's quite a distinctive font. What I might do is reach out to https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/ who appear to have made a true recreation of the font. Perhaps they could point you in the right direction on having a similar font

 

[stadler]

Hello,
I'm working on a project recreating the departure boards seen in many major stations in the UK. I have managed to slightly modified this font's regular version to create a font close enough to the font used in the body text for me to be happy with. However, I'm struggling to find a font that accurately matches the font used for the destination name, time and platform number at the top (see image). Does anybody know of a font that matches this? Thanks in advanced for any help.

View attachment 187904

There is not just one standard font. It varies depending on the manufacturer and even on the boards.

We have three main companies who make our LED versions of CIS boards (although Infotec have a monopoly) and they all have different fonts to each other:

Infotec
Ferrograph
Data Display (Daktronics)

All three have different fonts and sometimes even multiple fonts. Infotec have different fonts with some of their older boards using a different font to their newer more common boards.

So there is not really a standard font as such. But you could try contacting Infotec and seeing if they will tell you the font they use as they provide most boards nowadays.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Are the ones in the boards even fonts in the conventional sense? They're quite low-res pixellated (and therefore not scalable like a computer font).
Would be interesting to know how the displays work in terms of converting the text into the right pixels.

 

[etr221]

Hmm. Reading up the London TFL Dot Matrix Typeface on GIThub (that OP quotes as base for his body text), that is a labour of love, whose author (Sean Petykowski) had the same wish for a 'TfL displays' font, as the OP has for NR fonts, so my thinking is that perhaps the OP should follow his example, and create (and publish) his own font - as these are based on dot-matrix displays, the difficult bit (what the various characters look like) is very much simplified (just a matter of noting the arrangement of dots/pixels), from this it is (I think) a straight forward matter of converting this to a font file.

 

[thejuggler]

Slight point of order. It appears the query is about the typeface (the name for the design and how it looks) rather than the font (how that design is presented and varied when in use - size, italic, bold etc).

 

[eastwestdivide]

Slight point of order. It appears the query is about the typeface (the name for the design and how it looks) rather than the font (how that design is presented and varied when in use - size, italic, bold etc).

You're fighting a losing battle there: it's been the Font menu in most software for donkey's years!

 

[FenMan]

Hello,
I'm working on a project recreating the departure boards seen in many major stations in the UK. I have managed to slightly modified this font's regular version to create a font close enough to the font used in the body text for me to be happy with. However, I'm struggling to find a font that accurately matches the font used for the destination name, time and platform number at the top (see image). Does anybody know of a font that matches this? Thanks in advanced for any help.

View attachment 187904

This question has been asked before. Here you go (I checked the link and it's still live):

Departure Board Software

Out of interest how many people would be interested in introducing an admin tool that could control what a board can do. E.g You could just leave up the board on a screen permanently, and control what is shown on it from a separate computer.

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[vuzzeho]

This question has been asked before. Here you go (I checked the link and it's still live):

Departure Board Software

Out of interest how many people would be interested in introducing an admin tool that could control what a board can do. E.g You could just leave up the board on a screen permanently, and control what is shown on it from a separate computer.

www.railforums.co.uk

That doesn't look like the exact font to me, similar but not quite

 

[dosxuk]

There's actually four different "fonts" in use in the original screen grab. All will have been created by hand with knowledge of the exact number of LED pixels that are being used - the one used for the list of stations looks very similar to many of the 9-row pixel fonts, with a few tweaks - (but there is little variation possible with that little resolution). The screens won't just be using a TTF that can be downloaded and used on a PC, so for an exact match you're probably looking into commissioning multiple fonts using the screens as a source material for the designer.

 

[greaterwest]

This download has a collection of accurate designs of current and past PIS / CIS fonts, although it is missing a few: https://github.com/davwheat/uk-dot-matrix/files/13767323/font.zip