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Old 02-18-2019, 09:21 AM   #324
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
Very nice!

To my eyes, one modernish thing jumped off the screen as I watched this.



It's the FONT used here. The font is Gill Sans, the predecessor to Helvetica.

It will not appear "modern" at all to Brits, because British Rail adopted it really early in history. It was used in the 30s for things that wanted to look modern, and became the standard British Railways font in 1948. But its predecessor was developed by a man named Johnson for the London Underground in the 1910s.

Since it's for railway signage, it's also seen in the film here:



And this conductor has a box of it on his right:



When the world found Helvetica (1957), and wanted to become modern, that became THE font for transport signage, and in some places, it still is:



Most signage uses different variants on Helvetica now; the font has been endlessly refined for different things. We computer users are most familiar with its little cousin Arial. There is a good chance you are reading this sentence in Arial.
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