Seeing Rochester signs through Chuck Bigelow’s eyes

A neighbor and I were walking together one evening near our homes when we found ourselves at a corner facing a street sign.

“Not the best choice of fonts,” he said, looking up at the sign.

“How so?” I asked.

“Look inside the e, the d, and the two a’s. There’s almost no space in them; they’re clogged. And the space between the s and the p is tight, but between the n and a there’s a gap; it’s loose. The rhythm’s uneven. For some people, it could be hard to read.”

That was just the beginning; he shared a much longer analysis of the problems with the typeface.

I might have dismissed the critique except my neighbor is Charles Bigelow, an award-winning, internationally-known typographer. With his design partner (and now wife) Kris Holmes, Bigelow created some of the earliest and most widely used computer fonts, including the well-known family of fonts called “Lucida.” He’s consulted for tech giants like Apple, IBM, Adobe, and Microsoft. And at age 37, he was one of the first and among the younger recipients of a MacArthur Fellowship—the so-called “Genius Grant.”

So, if my neighbor thinks the town of Brighton might have chosen a better font for our street sign, I’m inclined to believe him.

It was fascinating to see what Bigelow sees when he looks at public signs. Would he take a ride with me around Rochester and look at other public signage?  

He readily agreed.

Before I recount our travels—which included brushes with security both at Amtrak and Wegmans—here’s some background on this creative Rochesterian whose work many of us see, and read, daily.

Born in 1945, Bigelow grew up in the Detroit suburbs. His father, a salesman, was also an amateur painter who made a point of taking his son to art museums. Bigelow remembers especially viewing Impressionistic paintings. In a Degas painting, he once told Hour Detroit Magazine, he’d see a young dancer’s hand, “but up close, they’re just little flecks of brush strokes so I remember always that things look different close up and far away.”

At Reed College, in Oregon, he studied anthropology, but a class in graphic design was influential. “The professor taught the history of writing and also calligraphy—how to write elegant letters,” he remembered.

In his early 30s, Bigelow encountered computers and dot matrix printers—and noticed something. “The fonts didn’t work,” he said. “Traditional typefaces had tight spacing between the letters, but on low-resolution screens or printers the letters would almost touch. If you spelled in Helvetica typeface on a dot matrix printer the name “John Warnock,” he explained, “the r would meet the n and it looked like ‘John Wamock.’” 

Bigelow authored a series of articles for industry journals about the changes that would be needed for the emerging field of digital typography. It was probably these articles, he thinks, that caught the eye of the MacArthur Foundation and led to his being awarded the fellowship in 1982. This was just before he became an associate professor of digital typography at Stanford University. “I think the award was for the potential people saw in my work,” he said, “more than for any actual achievement.”

Bigelow declines to confirm the amount of the MacArthur award, but it was six figures, no strings attached, payable over five years. “For five years,” he told me, “I was paid roughly what an associate professor made—but I didn’t have to do anything; I just got the money.”

With the money, he wrote more articles, lectured, and organized the first international conference on digital type design.

Two years later, in 1984, Bigelow and design partner Holmes created from scratch a new typeface for computer screens and printers. They aimed to design a font that would be easily legible when displayed on a low- or medium-resolution display and when printed at small size on a laser printer. They called the new font Lucida—from “lucid,” meaning clear or easy to understand and made out of light.

Over the years, Bigelow and Holmes expanded Lucida to include more than a dozen varieties. Some are serif fonts, with decorative lines at the tops and bottoms of letters; others, like the original Lucida, are sans serif—simple, clean lines with no decorative features.

Here are some that still today come installed with Microsoft Word:

When he’s writing an article or drafting a book chapter, Bigelow told me, he typically uses Lucida Grande, a variation of Lucida Sans.

Bigelow and Holmes have licensed Lucida fonts to Adobe, Microsoft and Apple, among others. They created other popular fonts, too, including one composed of icons, arrows, and stars. Microsoft bought it and renamed it “Wingdings.”

Bigelow taught at Stanford until 1995. In 2006, Rochester Institute of Technology offered him the Melbert B. Cary Distinguished Professorship. He and Holmes moved to Rochester; Holmes later taught at RIT too. Bigelow retired in 2012.

What makes a good font?

“Partly it’s fashion, partly it’s technology, and partly it’s the function,” Bigelow once told an interviewer. “A font on a laundry detergent needs to be bold to look like it’ll beat the dirt right out of your clothes. In a novel, you don’t want the font to tell you anything other than what the writer is trying to tell you. Generally, to me, a great font is easy to read (and) … must have polish, rhythm, and shapes that are pleasing to the eye.”

Before type became digital, Bigelow told me, no one much cared about fonts. “But now that we can all choose fonts on our computers, many people have strong opinions. Fonts have become a little bit like public figures or rock stars or actors—people love some fonts and hate others.”

As it happened, on our driving tour of Rochester to look at public signage, we found several fonts to love.

Welcome Rochester

“WELCOME ROCHESTER  CENTER CITY” proclaims the sign that hangs over South Clinton Avenue just as you come off the 490 exit ramp near Geva Theatre.

“The whole thing is in Garamond serif, all caps,” said Bigelow, immediately identifying the font, as we viewed the sign from the sidewalk. The font was originally designed, he explained over traffic noise, by French engraver Claude Garamond around 1540 in Paris, then later revived in the early 20^th century when it became extremely popular.

How many fonts can you recognize by sight? I asked.

“More than 100,” he said, noting that there are more than 200,000 fonts today but that only 1,000 or so are commonly used.

Bigelow pointed out that the initial “R” in Rochester is larger than the other letters—a detail that had escaped me—and that the curved front “foot” of the R extends below the lower line of the other letters. Also, that spacing between the O and C is “tight,” that is, narrower than the space between other letters. “But it doesn’t seem to compromise readability,” he said.

“The whole sign is nicely done,” added Bigelow. “You can read it from a distance as you come over the hill. It’s the city talking to us—the visitors—in all capitals. It connotes authority and seriousness, but with that open, French font, it’s welcoming, not oppressive.”

(By contrast, inside the city-owned ramp garage on South Clinton, a “DO NOT ENTER” sign hangs over one lane. “That’s all caps, sans serif,” said Bigelow. “They’re saying, ‘We really mean it!’—and not in any wimpy, French font.)

Amtrak Station

“AMTRAK Rochester Station” reads the sign in white letters against the red brick wall of the downtown train station.

“AMTRAK” is a logo—not any particular font,” said Bigelow, “but ‘Rochester Station’ is in a version of a typeface used at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and designed by the Swiss typographer Adrian Frutiger.”  Then he added, “Kris and I knew him.”

The Frutiger typeface, said Bigelow, “is an outstanding sans serif, clear and legible, one of the best of the 20^th century. The spaces between the letters are rhythmic with ample space inside the letters. See the space inside the a and the e? It’s wonderfully open—the opposite of what we saw on our neighborhood street sign where the letters are clogged and oddly spaced.”

Why, in his opinion, would Amtrak have chosen the Frutiger font?

 “Amtrak wants to look modern, and this helps achieve that,” he said. “And what you don’t want in a sign like this is distraction. Here, you can smoothly grasp the words.”

Over the main entrance of the station, a much larger sign reads: “LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER  ROCHESTER STATION”

“This is Palatino,” said Bigelow, instantly. “It was designed in the late 1940s by a German calligrapher, Hermann Zapf, who managed to survive World War II in part because when he served in the German invasion of France, he was assigned to be a map maker.” 

Zapf, Bigelow added, came to Rochester in 1969 to be the first recipient of the Frederic W. Goudy Award, given to an outstanding practitioner in the field of type design and typography. Years later, both Bigelow and Holmes received the Goudy award too.

“Zapf taught at RIT for a year,” Bigelow said, adding that he and Holmes took his summer course.

“Palatino,” Bigelow explained, “is a serif font with some nice calligraphic features.” He noted how in the initial capital letter R in Rochester, the downward sloping front “leg” of the letter doesn’t quite touch the body of the R but provides some open space.  

“So, what does this sign say to the arriving traveler?” I asked.

 “It’s authoritative, it’s an honorific (of Louise Slaughter), and it’s welcoming,” said Bigelow.

We were just entering the station to have a look inside when a ticket agent approached and asked what we were doing. Suddenly it dawned on me that, despite our being just a couple of guys in our 70s, by pointing to and photographing different sections of the building, we might appear suspicious. But when we explained our mission, the agent welcomed us and offered a tour—on which we saw more signs in the same font as those outdoors.

Our visit completed, Bigelow marveled that Rochester’s Amtrak station had managed to use for its signage two of the greatest fonts of the 20^th century: Frutiger and Palatino.

“Louise Slaughter,” he said, “can be proud that such typefaces are used at the station built to honor her.”

Pittsford Wegmans

The 130,000-square-foot Wegmans store on Monroe Avenue in Pittsford—sometimes referred to as “Mega-Weg” or the “mother ship” of the Wegmans chain—seemed a good place to have a look at Wegmans signage.

From the parking lot in front, Bigelow and I had a good view of three prominent signs on the front of the building.

The first, to our right, was a giant version of the familiar “Wegmans” logo. “I can’t tell you what font it is,” said Bigelow. “It’s a design made especially for Wegmans.”

“It’s a slanted, connecting script,” he noted, “where the bold thickness of the lettering speaks in a loud, deep voice and has some power behind it. And yet it’s sprightly: the strokes of the W arch up in a swash, the g descends, and the a, n, and s run together. Overall, I’d say it’s a welcoming, friendly look, more casual than authoritative, suggesting it’s going to be fun to go inside.”

Directly in front of us was a sign for the store’s “MARKET Café.” 

“It’s a quirky style,” Bigelow said. “The word “Market” is in all caps and with a bold M, but in an old-style serif font. It’s a hodge-podge, a mutant descendant of the Garamond typeface.”

“Then you have “Café,” he continued, “in a joining script with an open a and a cute accent over the e in tribute, I guess, to the French word. It tells us—I don’t know what—maybe that there’s some coffee or espresso here?”

Finally, to our left was the “Burger Bar” sign. This one seemed to stump Bigelow.

“The erratic Bs are lower than the lowercase letters,” he began. “The r of Burger pops up above the g. There’s an oscillating baseline. The look is child-like, or maybe adolescent—almost like you’d see inside a word balloon in a comic strip. Certainly, less formal than the Wegmans or Market Café signs. It says, ‘We don’t put on airs here. Just come in—dress casually; wear shorts if you want—and have a burger.’”

Bigelow and I entered the store to have a further look, but in less than a minute an employee approached. “Can I help you find something?” I think my notebook and camera had triggered security. Rather than try to explain, we beat a quick retreat.

The Airport

Bigelow declined my invitation to inspect signs at the airport. Given that we’d already had two brushes with security, the idea of attracting armed TSA agents didn’t much appeal to him. Instead, we agreed I’d go to the airport and bring back some photos for him to review.

The ROC logo on the airport’s main welcome sign is “hand-designed” he said. “It’s not a font.” But the writing below the logo—FREDERICK DOUGLASS GREATER ROCHESTER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT—immediately caught his eye.

“The font’s called Gill Sans,” he said. “It’s named after Eric Gill, a British stonecutter from the late-19^th and early 20^th centuries. According to a scandalous biography of him, Gill dressed and acted like a medieval monk but with a scandalous sex life.

“The font is sans serif with a modern look,” he continued. “Note how the O, U, D, and the G are wide, but the F, R, E, and S are narrow. It captures the style of ancient Roman inscriptional writing but in a modern, 20^th century idiom.

The Wikipedia entry on Gill Sans confirms Bigelow’s point: the uppercase letters of the font were partly modeled on Roman capital letters like those found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. Introduced in the late 1920s, the font was quickly adopted by British Railways, Penguin Books, and many others for its successful mixing of ancient and modern styles.

But the airport might also have chosen the font, Bigelow offered, “because in Gill Sans the O is circular like the O in the ROC logo.”

“Aren’t all Os circular?” I asked.

“Not all are,” he said. “They’re round, but by circular I mean a real circle like you’d draw with a compass.

“Also,” he continued, “this font offers the illusion that the thickness of the letters is all the same. Though they vary in width, none appear to be thinner or fatter than others. This kind of uniformity is geometric; it suggests engineering rather than handwriting and therefore implies technical competence—something you’d want to project at an airport.”

Of the “Passenger Security Checkpoint” sign over the entrance to the area for security screening, Bigelow said, “First, notice the O—it’s oval, almost egg-shaped, in contrast with the circular O of the outdoor welcome sign.

“The sign is in all caps and sans serif,” he continued. “I don’t know the specific font—there are many, many modern fonts like this one, but notice how uniform in width the letters are: the O is the same width as the K and the A. That may be why this font was chosen, because to present everything as uniform implies authority and control—exactly what you’d want at a security checkpoint.”

In retirement, Bigelow, now 79, and Holmes do some consulting. Bigelow has written some articles, including one called “Oh, O, Zero” about the historical and modern confusion over the numeral zero and the capital and lowercase letter O.

If he were a letter in a font, I asked Bigelow, what would he be? He said that because he wears shoes and, often, a baseball cap, he’d be a serif font—a little decoration both on the bottom and the top.  As for a letter, he said he’d be an L because he’s tall—just over six feet. But then he reconsidered. “I might better be a lowercase h. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a little bulge.”

Peter Lovenheim is Washington correspondent for the Rochester Beacon. He is author of In the Neighborhood and other works. His newest book, Gift Shop of Gratitude, will be published this November. He can be reached at [email protected].