Please help identify this 1930s-1950s industrial font

I am doing a wayfinding project for a warehouse style building built between 1935-1956 (northern Europe).

I could really use some help identifying the type used for these number signs. I only have numbers, no letters to go by. What the font / identifont was no help so far. My alternative is redrawing the numbers to produce extra signs for the building – so any lead is appreciated :slight_smile:

Definitely a Grotesque of some kind.

Failing that Swiss 921 is a close match.

The word ‘SIKRINGSRUM’ may be the same font but the closest I can find to that is Solido Compressed Medium and the numerals don’t match.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/dstype/solido-compressed/medium/

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Thank you for your efforts :slight_smile: I will go through a few catalogues of Swiss style typography to see if I can find it the old fashioned way. Or ask a retired sign maker!

If any of you have tips, it’s much appreciated!

I’m sure it’s occurred to you that if this is from the 1930s-50s that it may not be a typeface at all.
A retired sign maker may have hand lettered that. Or, if those things are cast, they may be in one of the 6 typefaces a metal-casting foundry would have had available back then. You can run into that now in the cast letter industry. You use the typefaces they have available in the sizes they have available, or you pay thru the nose for a custom casting. Most people do not have the $$$$$ or the time for the latter.

I suspect PrintDriver is right about this. It very well could be an old typeface used in a very specialized niche that has never been digitized. It bears some resemblance to some of the typefaces Morris Fuller Benton designed about 100 years ago, but I found no match.

As for a digital equivalent, it’s quite similar to a type family called Vanguard CF by Connary Fagen. Here’s a link to the family and to the weight that most closely resembles it.


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Thanks so much for your input, it’s very valuable.

The signs are cast, as you suggest. My initial thoughts on this were that the original type / cast must be some kind of standard used in similar buildings at the time and thus there’s the chance of a digitized version somewhere.

If not, it really should be digitized because these are beautiful numbers! There’s a future project for me :relaxed:

Oh well, I’m sensing I need to go to the source on this one.