All in a Spin

Edward Wright’s Unique Scotland Yard Typeface

It’s a distinctive sanserif which appears on television at least twice a week, yet few people know its name or the identity of the designer behind it. Flaxman was created in 1967 for the use of the Metropolitan Police in London, and spells out the words New Scotland Yard on that three-sided revolving sign which appears behind crime reporters on news bulletins. Research by BBC News reveals that it appears on British television around 800 times a year on the Corporation’s networks alone.

Flaxman is also found within the buildings occupied by the Met Police in London. Door numbers, direction signs and wayfinding systems within New Scotland Yard also use Edward Wright’s custom-designed face.

Ed Wright (1912-1988) was a lecturer at the Chelsea School of Art and the name of his typeface alludes to the old telephone exchange name for that part of London - ‘FLAxman’.  Former St Bride Librarian, James Mosley, also had a hand in the naming of the face, alerting Wright to the fact that one of the earliest users of sanserif inscriptional letterforms was the sculptor John Flaxman (1755-1826). Although John Flaxman’s work was not the direct inspiration for Wright’s Scotland Yard typeface, his name serendipitously mirrored the Chelsea telephone area designation and was adopted with alacrity.

When Ed Wright was commissioned to provide the lettering for the New Scotland Yard building, he did not feel that a conventional fascia sign would be an adequate identifier.  Wright said at the time, “It is suggested that the sign should be a massive ‘block’...having upon it the words NEW SCOTLAND YARD in stainless steel relief. [It] is to rotate slowly, day and night, like a beacon and to be lit obliquely from two points. The idea behind the sign arises from the very nature of the Police force, always alert and prepared to confront emergencies which threaten the peace of a great city.”

Drawings for the 3D metal lettering used on the famous revolving sign survive in the Metropolitan Police Architect’s office and show a small number of variant characters. A modified ‘G’ was designed for Ground Floor office numbers.

A full set of drawings also survive for another version of Flaxman, cut in wood by Robert DeLittle, the York poster type manufacturer. Although it shares a name with the Scotland Yard typeface, DeLittle’s Flaxman Semi-Bold, also by Edward Wright, is unrelated and was designed with lower-case characters only. The wood type version of Flaxman was cut in 18 line (x-height) only (216pt) at a cost of £26 in 1967, equivalent to around £500 today. It was used to produce poetry banners for display at the 1967 Brighton Festival. There is some documentary evidence that an even larger size may have been made by DeLittle. Correspondence about the face between Wright and DeLittle survived in the Type Archive collections. The material is currently being stored by the trustees of the former Type Archive in anticipation of a permanent move to York in the future.

The Scotland Yard version of Flaxman was also produced in the form of Letraset rub-down lettering. The master patterns for the majority of Letraset faces are held in 164 large filing boxes at St Bride Library but Flaxman is not among them, perhaps because it was made for a private client and never made available commercially. The whereabouts of the Flaxman Letraset patterns is currently unknown.

The late Ann Pillar, typography lecturer at Reading University and former director of publicity for the Monotype Corporation described the Scotland Yard sign as “part of the national consciousness.” The revolving tricorn has also become internationally recognised, to the point that many foreign visitors to the capital regularly ask where they can see “that sign.” Scotland Yard’s twirling deltoid has become as much a part of London’s international image as Big Ben and St Paul’s cathedral.