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BBC SHERLOCK - Title Font analysis
I’m obsessed with everything about Sherlock. Like the music, the camera style, the colors and so on. And now I’m totally into the font.
I know there are a lot of blogs about the font’s. But I would like to make a small analysis about the pretty title font.
First of all:
This is a sans serif font. Basically it means it has no “tails” aka “serif”. Because of this most of this fonts looks a little bit blocky. Examples for other sans serif fonts are: Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Gill Sans and so on…
The font itself
Most of the time the font for the title is called P22 Johnston Underground. This font was made by Edward Johnston for the London Underground system in 1916.
Actually it’s right. It’s the correct font for a lot of text in Sherlock. But I startet to realise it’s not really the same. You’ll see what I mean.
That’s how the word “Sherlock” looks in P22 Underground (different styles)
(P22 Johnston Regular)
(P22 Johnston Bold)
(P22 Johnston Greek Demi)
You think it looks a lot like the original, aren’t you?
Let’s take a closer look on the title… I made a vector of the title font…
There are a lot of little differences between the P22 font and the title font. If you can’t see, take a closer look to these spots:
Above: Title Font
Below: P22 Regular
Now you can see, there are a lot of differences between these.
So. What’s the point of all these? I just want to show you the awesome title they created based on the underground font. But It’s not the underground font itself.
And!
If you want to use a similar font for a project about Sherlock (or else) there are alternatives (they are not perfect, but free). Because P22 Johnston Underground is a commercial font.
Free alternatives:
London Tube by Jonathan Paterson
Underground by Nick`s Curtis
I hope you liked it … a little bit…
Oh wow, thank you! :D
In my works I use the font Gill Sans which is also a commerical font (luckily I got a lot of fonts from my university) and it’s different from the logo - the S, R and K are wrong… the E too… (mostly I modify the S and stretch it a little bit… uh, my typography professor would kill me if he know! :O).
The Gill Sans is based on the Johnston Sans and it’s used in the logo of the BBC :)




















