Hello everyone!

For years now, I have noticed something quite odd about a bunch of road signs, in an area that I visit from time to time. And it piqued my curiosity!

Normally, directional road signs in France mostly use typefaces called “L1”, “L2”, and “L4”. The “L1” typeface can be considered as the “standard” one, as it is used for most town names on white backgrounds (signs with a green or blue background use “L2”, which is a thinner variant of “L1”).

However, on some of the road signs I have met, the typeface isn’t quite the same (see photos)… A bit boxier, a bit pointier, and all found in the same area: in or around the little town of Saujon, France. Surely this geographical repartition cannot be a coincidence.

I felt the need to find the name of that intriguing typeface. Searches using automated tools, such as WhatTheFont and Matcherator, returned no satisfying result. Identifont wasn’t helpful either.

So I started to examine the road signs. The labels, on the back of the signs, informed me that they were manufactured between 1981 and 1998, save for one made in 2009.

Many of them were supplied by sign manufacturer Neuhaus (renamed Signature in 1991), as mentioned by the labels. I have sent an e-mail to Signature with my inquiry but, alas, it remains unanswered as of now.

I also asked a worker at the local Direction des Infrastructures in Saujon, which is in charge of installing road signs on départementales roads where I noticed the unusual typeface. He said that the Direction des Infrastructures does not control which typefaces are featured on the road signs; only the manufacturers do, following the official regulations.

I found that quite odd, because a few of the signs were supplied by an other manufacturer, Laporte (which is now defunct). One well-known sign manufacturer could have used the wrong typeface. But two? That seems unlikely to me. Hypothesis: could the local Direction des Infrastructures have applied non-regulatory lettering on blank signs at the time?

And, most importantly: What is its name of this non-regulatory typeface, and where may I find it?

So this is the question of personal curiosity that brings me here, on this forum, today! I have attached several pictures of road signs featuring the odd typeface (I apologize for the poor quality of some of the photos). The typeface is usually featured on the white-background signs itself, not on the yellow-background route indicators; however, the “D 241” route indicator, on top of the “Bordeaux” sign, seems to use it as well.

I imagine easily that you receive quite a number of font identification requests, so let me thank you already for your attention on that submission (I’m aware I have written quite a wall of text!). And thank you in advance for any help you could bring in identifying this typeface!

TLDR

Looking for a non-regulatory typeface featured on road signs (mostly manufactured in the 80’s and 90’s) around the town of Saujon, no answer from the manufacturers and the local road maintenance service: what its name is, and where to find it.

I doubt it is a publicly available font with a trade name. It has all the hallmarks of a pre-digital, constructed design without any considerations of optical compensations a designer of print fonts would apply. I understand you have tried this already, but finding more information through the companies making the signs is still the best (if not only) approach to identify the typeface.