About this typeface: The Dutch license plate font bears the strong imprint of Gill Sans in basic overall character construction (with Gill Sans Bold Condensed as the model), although the weight is lighter. Gill Sans, developed in 1928–1932, had its own antecedents in the Johnston typeface commissioned by London Transport executive Frank Pick for use on London Underground railway signage, and completed by Edward Johnston in 1916. Eric Gill assisted on the project while working for Johnston, and his Gill Sans, developed for both text and display use, attests to the primary influence of Johnston on its design.

Strong similarities to Gill Sans in the Dutch font can be seen in the numeral shapes as well as the vertically sheared-off stroke endings in a number of characters such as 2, 3, 5, C, G, J, and S, where you don’t often find them in a sans serif font.

There are differences as well, however, some of which are obvious accommodations to license plate requirements. For example, the O, P, and R have anti-tampering cuts sliced out of the characters similar to the zero character in Germany’s FE Schrift, and the crossbar heights of the E and F are much different than each other for anti-falsification reasons as well.

Other alterations compared to Gill Sans are:

• J – tail shortened to baseline.
• Q – tail begins inside character and ends at baseline to right of character, rather than beginning at bottom of bowl and hanging below baseline.
• R – straight right leg as opposed to curved.
• S – wider, with the spine’s curve shaped more like Gill Sans Bold regular width.
• W – narrowed considerably—although M has not been, which is odd.
• Z – vertices made blunt as opposed to sharp.

To download this font:

Dafont.com

We do not sell fonts ourselves or field questions about them.