I approached Radim Pesko with this question and he started to think of an 'in between' version. He found out that the Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger once was asked the same question for the subway system in Paris in 1973. He was asked to design a ‘special variation’ of his Univers typeface. The variant was introduced in 1973 to replace the twenty alphabets previously in use by the network. Later, Frutiger wrote: ‘It is the special charm of the Paris Métro that its applied aesthetics are not stamped with a uniform style. Forms of expression of the past hundred years, such as the beautiful Art Nouveau portals, are in many cases still present. This variety should be preserved as well as possible, as an enrichment of the scene. The joining together of typographical elements into a new harmonious order was a task requiring a certain degree of restraint so far as the creation of new forms was concerned.’


The typeface that Adrian Frutiger developed in 1973

We visited Paris and documentated the subway system. We collected all the letters from the alfabet and the numbers. Also some special characters as accents and icons were documentated. In the final design of the signage system of the museum i use more references to design of the subway system. But since the Zeeuws Museum is not a subway, in the end the typeface we devoloped and the way it is used in the museum became a thing on it's own. 


A random subway station in Paris, 2007