San Francisco finally has its own font. And the inspiration was truly historic

It took 171 years and a few days, but San Francisco finally has an official font.

We’re not counting the recent Apple “San Francisco” font, which has nothing to do with the city and looks like Helvetica on a low-carb diet. Ben Zotto’s Fog City Gothic is inspired by old San Francisco street signs, and the typeface has a mood to it.

The Hayes Valley resident works in computers, design, history and neighborhood associations, and he combined the four things to create his first font.

“I’m an amateur typographer. I don’t know if it would pass muster with real professionals, but it came out pretty well,” Zotto says. “And I thought, ‘I should share this.’”

The font is inspired by San Francisco’s old embossed street signs, distinctive black-on-white steel markers that began appearing in 1946 and were prevalent in the city in the 1960s and 1970s. The bubbled-out letters can be seen in archive photos, movies such as “Bullitt” and “Vertigo,” and almost every episode of “The Streets of San Francisco.” The signs have long since been phased out by San Francisco officials for a flatter, decidedly less cool design, but Zotto was able to re-create their distinctive font using historic photos.

Zotto’s font is for sale at his web site. He spoke to The Chronicle by phone, a day after announcing Fog City Gothic on social media.

Q: What sparked your interest in creating a font for San Francisco?

A: I’ve always loved street signs. I came to the city maybe 14 years ago, and they’ve been a signature of the streets of the city and the built environment. I thought, “What’s the actual history on these?” … As I was digging, I realized the black-on-white signs had two different typeface variations. There’s the one that’s in use now that’s highway standard — “highway gothic” they call it. But I realized this other older typeface was different.

As far as I can tell it’s sort of a bespoke thing that the San Francisco sign shop cooked up based on federal standards, but not exactly like federal standards.

A sample of the

A sample of the “regular” Fog City Gothic font, a new typeface created by Ben Zotto based on old San Francisco street signs.

Courtesy Ben Zotto /

Q: The San Francisco street signs that you based your font on don’t exist any more, correct?

A: They do not. I’m not sure when they stopped producing these black-on-white embossed enameled steel signs, but my suspicion is it was sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Ever since then they’ve been flat. They haven’t been embossed. The signing technology moved on.

Q: Why did you want a font based on this specific era of street signs?

A: I just think it’s very interesting. I like things that are unique and particular and don’t necessarily have a name, but had a large impact on the visual environment. The typeface was embossed in metal, and what happens is the edges get softened, and they paint the sign on top so it looks different from different angles. That’s what I wanted to capture. Bold and blockish, but soft around the edges. I called it Fog City Gothic hoping to evoke that feeling.

Q: How much time did you put into Fog City Gothic?

A: I thought it would just be a little kick-around side project, and then ended up putting a ton of time into it. I sourced the letter forms from all different kinds of historic photos, and tried to trace them and normalize them and space them and kern them.

Steve McQueen tied to buy a Chronicle, with a Taylor Street sign in the background, in the 1968 movie

Steve McQueen tied to buy a Chronicle, with a Taylor Street sign in the background, in the 1968 movie “Bullitt.”

Warner Bros. 1968

Q: Does City Hall have a Department of Fonts? At any point did you seek help from City Hall or the SFMTA?

A: I tried to get in touch with a couple of folks I know at the SFMTA, and that didn’t really go anywhere. I could have pressed harder. But in the end, frankly, I was looking for a reason to do a project. Having an excuse to build a typeface that might be useful for some people seemed like a lot of fun. So I just kind of did it.

Q: With the street signs gone, was there a particular letter that was difficult to create? Did you have Z issues?

A: Fortunately this typeface is only uppercase, so that simplifies a lot of things. There were a couple letters and a few digits that I didn’t really have a historic source for. Characters that are rare out in the world (including) the letter X and the number 4 I just didn’t have a good reference. I had to look at similar typefaces and make something I thought was close.

There’s a Z in Sanchez Street and a Z in Mizpah Street, so I had sources for that.

Q: What other problems did you run across?

A: While (Fog City Gothic) has two different widths, the actual signs were in four different widths. One width is quite common, then there’s a much chunkier width for signs with six letters or less, then there are a couple of skinnier widths for when you have Embarcadero or Divisadero or another longer name. That’s still true today by the way. Once you’re looking for it, you’ll see Oak Street and Fell Street, and the letters are huge.

Snow blankets the rooftops and a street sign near Graystone and Twin Peaks Boulevard in San Francisco during a rare snowfall in 1976

Snow blankets the rooftops and a street sign near Graystone and Twin Peaks Boulevard in San Francisco during a rare snowfall in 1976

Joseph J. Rosenthal / The Chronicle

Q: What do you hope people will do with this?

A: It has a midcentury industrial vibe to it, or a midcentury civic urban vibe to it. I would hope it would be useful to any graphic designer doing any work in that domain. If it’s used for specific San Francisco stuff, that’s even more delightful. It’s on sale right now for real cheap (currently marked down to $5 for both the regular and wide version, or $4 for just one), in the hopes that San Francisco people might grab it without quite knowing what to do with it — then find something fun to remix it into.

Q: Do you have any other font projects coming up?

A: I made two of the best-looking font widths (for Fog City Gothic). I have an inclination to see if I could do at least one more width on it, to make it more useful as a typeface family. I don’t have other fonts on the horizon.

A herd of cattle pause in the Cow Palace parking lot after their arrival for the 63rd annual Grand National Rodeo, Horse & Stock Show in Daly City, Calif., on Thursday, April 3, 2008.

A herd of cattle pause in the Cow Palace parking lot after their arrival for the 63rd annual Grand National Rodeo, Horse & Stock Show in Daly City, Calif., on Thursday, April 3, 2008.

Paul Chinn / SFC

Q: Can I nominate the Comic Sans of local fonts, the font used for the Cow Palace?

A: (Looks it up on Google.) Oh, yeah! The one where the A’s are kind of going backwards and they’re sort of mirror images of each other. That’s an interesting (typeface).

Q: How does it feel having your font out in the world?

A: It’s very gratifying that other people who share my interests and inclinations are seeing it, and having kind of a kinship excitement in the result. If somebody finds something cool to do with it, San Francisco-wise, that would be even more delightful.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub