Fran Sans – font inspired by San Francisco light rail displays

Summary

Written by EMILY SNEDDON Published on 6TH NOVEMBER 2025 Fran Sans is a display font in every sense of the term. It’s an interpretation of the destination displays found on some of the light rail vehicles that service the city of San Francisco. SFMTA Photo Department I say some because destination displays aren’t consistently used across the city’s transit system. In fact, SF has an unusually high number of independent public transit agencies. Unlike New York, Chicago or L.A., which each have one, maybe two, San Francisco and the greater Bay Area have over two dozen. Each agency, with its own models of buses and trains, use different destination displays, creating an eclectic patchwork of typography across the city. Among them, one display in particular has always stood out to me: the LCD panel displays inside Muni’s Breda Light Rail Vehicles. I remember first noticing them on a Saturday in October on the N-Judah, heading to the Outer Sunset for a shrimp hoagie. This context is important, as anyone who’s spent an October weekend in SF knows this is the optimal vibe to really take in the beauty of the city. What caught my eye was how the displays look mechanical and yet distinctly personal. Constructed on a 3×5 grid, the characters are made up of geometric modules: squares, quarter-circles, and angled forms. Combined, these modules create imperfect, almost primitive letterforms, revealing a utility and charm that feels distinctly like the San Francisco I’ve come to know. This balance of utility and charm seems to show up everywhere in San Francisco and its history. The Golden Gate’s “International Orange” started as nothing more than a rust-proof primer, yet is now the city’s defining colour. The Painted Ladies became multicoloured icons after the 1960s Colourist movement covered decades of grey paint. Even the steepness of the streets was once an oversight in city planning but has since been romanticised in films and on postcards. So perhaps it is unsurprising that I...