How can you not love how these Os just lean over and roll off the base­line, just as a cuckoo’s call trails off into noth­ing? Just perfect.

How cool are these Gs? I’ve never seen a G like this before, where the cross-stroke points out (to the right) instead of in (to the left). The result is a form that looks almost like a rotated Q.

Also, the com­bi­na­tion of sharp and rounded cor­ners here makes for some inter­est­ing shapes. Take the Y for exam­ple: it looks like a goalpost.

Clarendon is one of my favorite type­faces. An early slab-serif, the orig­i­nal face was designed by the Englishman Robert Besley in 1845. At the time, it was an entirely new form, some­thing of a hybrid between typ­i­cal Roman let­ters and the extremely heavy Egyptian forms of the day. Besley was going for shapes strong enough to be used along­side Roman text for empha­sis, but not so strong that they would over­whelm or dis­tract from the main text.

Using bold­face for empha­sis was a very new idea at the time -- ital­ics were more typ­i­cal -- and few, if any, fonts had bold vari­ants of the same face. (When bold text appeared, it was usu­ally set in a dif­fer­ent type­face than the sur­round­ing text, thereby caus­ing typog­ra­phers to strug­gle for bold/non-bold pairs that would com­ple­ment each other.) Thanks to Besley, using bold­face for empha­sis is now com­mon, and most com­mon type­faces are designed with bold variations.

My per­sonal con­nec­tion to Clarendon has been cul­ti­vated over a life­time of won­der­ful expe­ri­ences in the United States’ National Parks, where it is used on the ubiq­ui­tous brown road signs. From “Campsites, 100 Yards,” to “Lock Your Vehicle, Keep Valuables With You,” Clarendon has always been there to give me guid­ance and direc­tion, telling me where to go and what to do in some of the most beau­ti­ful places on Earth. Heading out to the back­coun­try for a few days, I don’t real­ize how much I miss Clarendon until I return -- per­haps drop­ping back into Yosemite Valley or com­ing around a bend at the Natural Arches -- when it reminds me not to feed the bears.

So I was shocked when I learned from the NY Times Magazine story “The Road to Clarity” that the National Park Service has decided to phase out Clarendon, replac­ing it on all their sig­nage with the newly designed NPS Rawlinson. Now Rawlinson’s not bad, but… it’s just not Clarendon. A Transportation Research Board pub­li­ca­tion claims that Rawlinson “requires less hor­i­zon­tal sign space than Clarendon while improv­ing sign read­abil­ity and retain­ing Clarendon’s unique sig­na­ture qual­ity.” I don’t doubt that Rawlinson uses less space, but it does so by using com­pletely dif­fer­ent let­ter­forms, thereby retain­ing noth­ing of Clarendon’s “unique sig­na­ture qual­ity,” what­ever that means. (Besides, if two type­faces share a “sig­na­ture qual­ity,” then it’s not “unique” any­more, is it?)

But I’m just being grumpy. Every time I’ve been in some truly breath­tak­ing place (in this coun­try), Clarendon has been there, too. So I asso­ciate the two, and, in my mind, Clarendon has a great “brand”: It’s out­doors, rugged, strong, awe-inspiring, fresh, clean and invig­o­rat­ing. Clarendon is solid, liq­uid, mossy, foggy, windswept and out-cropped. Rawlinson is none of that, and will never become that, at least not for me, in my lifetime.

But hey, at least the NPS didn’t choose Myriad. I’m hop­ing and pray­ing that this sign was a mis­take. (Note to NPS design­ers: Use “cre­ate out­lines” before send­ing your PDF to the sign shop!)