At one time, I must have watched a video about how Americans sentimental over Highway Gothic were opposed to the encroachment of Clearview on their roads.
How else can I explain it that YouTube suggested this video to me:
As I don't speak Spanish, I didn't watch the whole video, but I searched for a document that was shown in the video, finding that it was located at
In this manual of standards for road signage in Argentina, I found that the typeface specified for the signs was something called "Roadgeek 2005". That seemed like a rather odd name for a typeface officially designed for road signage. So I did some more searching, and found this web page
of the amateur font designer (and also a short-wave radio amateur) who, as a highway signage enthusiast, designed the typeface and prepared the fonts in question.
I downloaded them, and noted that the license explicitly disallows commercial use of the fonts, including, but not limited to, making actual highway signs with them. I suspect this stipulation was included to make it less likely that the people who made Highway Gothic and/or Clearview would sue him.
But that means that people can't make highway signs for Argentina without violating the terms of the license for the fonts for the specified typeface!
Comments
But I wonder if highway signage is "commercial" use, since it's not directly about making money.
That would be the ICC, wouldn't it?
I recall from around 2010 or 11, a parody proposal for a highway signage font for the EU which was scientifically distorted so that it would come into focus from a vehicle driving at 100 KpM. It may have been an April fools joke.
I don't want to make this political, but sadly, that's the truth. Granted, Argentina should have just commissioned a font like everyone else does, but a lot of politicos and bureaucrats tend to not think about these things.
Argentinian here.
In all honesty, our government's negligent with way more important issues. I can't even grasp the idea of them worrying about if they accidentally broke a typeface licensing term.
Whether they broke a law or not, they won't care.