A client has asked for my help identifying this font. He sent a photo and I have done a bit of perspective correction, assuming the cap O is a perfect circle. The best I could tell him off the bat was that it was close to Futura Demi, but not exactly that. It's quirky, with the curve at the bottom of the J almost as much an angle as a smooth curve, the bowl (right term?) of the R and middle crossbar of the E higher up than the visual center, the S that changes from curves at the top and bottom to a straight diagonal in the middle, and the bottom curve of the ampersand that kind of flattens out. The construction sign on which this typeface appears is not particularly old (not something that was truly done many decades ago) but the typeface feels very much early 20th Century to me. Any ideas? Thanks for your interest!

4 hours ago, JAW said:

the typeface feels very much early 20th Century to me

Century Gothic Bold.

That's exactly it! Thanks very much Riccardo. Now that I know what it is, I've read a bit about Century Gothic's history: Designed in 1991 as a digital font only (no foundry version), based on Sol Hess's Twentieth Century (1937-1947), strongly influenced by Futura, and created as a substitute for Lubalin's ITC Avant Garde (1970) — apparently Monotype Century Gothic and ITC Avant Garde copyfit the same. (Just parroting Wikipedia here.) Thanks again for the help!