National Park is a free typeface from The Design Outside Studio based on the “National Park Service signs that are carved using a router bit.” Studio founder and University of Kansas design professor Jeremy Shellhorn was visiting Rocky Mountain National Park when inspiration hit. He writes:
I had a sketchbook with me and took some rubbings of the letterforms and asked my friend Miles Barger, the Visual Information Specialist for Rocky, if he had the typeface. He asked the sign shop. No one has it? Turns out it isn’t a typeface at all but a system of paths, points and curves that a router follows.
The router’s “bit” follows the path and gives the letters its stroke weight or thickness only when engraving a sign.
It doesn’t really exist as a typeface unless a sign is made.
So my design colleague, Andrea Herstowski, students Chloe Hubler and Jenny O’Grady, NPS Ranger Miles Barger and myself decided to make this router typeface a thing.
Our National Parks belong to the people, so this typeface should too.
National Park Typeface (via Kottke)
