Typefaces are a big deal, I think we’d all agree. If they weren’t why would everyone have made such a big deal about the use of Papyrus for the Avatar movies? If words carry meaning, then typeface/font carries a lot of the voice. When it comes to car dashboards and instrument clusters, the choice of typography is an important one, as you have to factor in some important legibility concerns, along with a lot of styling demands, because these are cars, not industrial mixers. The instrument cluster is also the place on a car where the engineers can very directly convey the technological development level of the car to the driver, and often the aesthetics and design of the instruments is very directly informed by the technology used. That’s the main culprit behind what I want to talk about today: a typeface choice that, I think, may be one of the stupidest ever chosen for use on car dashboard gauges – well, I guess that depends on the medium. It’s complicated, sort of, but I think worth looking at, because it’s also interesting. The typeface I’m talking about are fake seven-segment display-style typefaces.
Before we get into the specifics of this typeface, it’s worth noting that there has always been a huge variety of typography on car instruments. There are trends, of course – you see a lot of Art Deco-inspired typography in the 1930s and 1940s, a lot of jet-age design in the 1950s to 1960s, and a swing to clarity and simplicity in the 1970s and 1980s, though in America the 1970s was more about ornate classy-adjacent kind of typography as well.
But let’s get back to the reason I’m going on and on, the seven-segment typographic look.
For the most part, this was a trend associated with the 1980s and early 1990s, but it still shows up sometimes today, in interfaces on modern LCD screens. Now, the name I’m using for this – seven-segment displays – is pretty geeky, but this is a typeface that I guarantee everyone knows and has seen. It comes from a particular type of numerical display technology that goes all the way back to the 1960s, with an especially famous example of its use being in the Apollo Guidance Computer’s DSKY terminals that got us to the moon and back:
Essentially, these displays are a set of seven segments that could be LED lights, tiny vacuum fluorescent tubes, liquid crystals, or whatever, arranged in the shape of a squared-off 8. From this shape, all ten digits can be formed:
The numbers are quite legible, but definitely have a distinctive squared-off, segmented look. Because these displays were so common in tech in the 1970s to 1980s and on – they’re still common today – they became a sort of visual shorthand for high-tech or computers, even if almost no computer larger than a calculator used these as a main display.
But here’s the thing about these sorts of digits – they’re inherently a best-we-can-do compromise. If there was a way to make those digits look better while still meeting the cost/performance/whatever metrics, you can be damn sure they would have done it, but the truth is for the given restrictions, these blocky looking glyphs are the best that they could do.
The look of these glyphs are absolutely the result of the extremely specific limitations of the medium. There’s not really any other reason why letter/numberforms that look like that should exist. That’s the main reason why I find it so absurd and even a little maddening when I see the seven-segment look used in places where there is absolutely no need for it.
My best-remembered example can be seen on a number of 1980s Chrysler K-Cars, like the LeBaron:
Now, Chrysler was using a lot of real seven-segment displays in their cars at the time, and when the numbers or letters show up on real displays, then of course that makes sense – they’re dynamic displays! But using the form of seven-segment displays on text that is printed on the instruments is, frankly, absurd.
Look at the FASTEN BELTS and the fuel gauge and that silly MESSAGE CENTER text – which did nothing; it was just a label, so why it would be rendered at all in an electronic display typeface is ridiculous. The whole idea of the MESSAGE CENTER is silly as it is, since it’s just referring to the diagram of the car above that shows if, say, a door or trunk is open. Those are the exciting messages you’re getting at that center. A message just came into the Message Center! Let’s see what it says! Oh, holy hell! A door! It’s ajar! Ajar I tell you!
Anyway, these aren’t displays. They don’t change. They’re just labels. And making them look like – actually, not even seven-segment displays, those would have to be 16-segment displays, because you needed the extra segments to make all those letters:
But, yeah, why would you choose to make your labels with typography that is clunkier and less legible and was defined by physical constraints that you simply don’t have when printing!
I get that physical constraints and idiosyncrasies are responsible for the look of many typefaces, and that’s fine – hell, the serif itself likely comes from how a brush stroke gets a bit squished at the ends!
But that’s not really what’s going on here – the fake seven-segment look inherently has a bit of subterfuge to it, a bit of a lie, because if you’re using it, you want the people looking at it to think that hey, maybe this is a more advanced kind of thing, not just printed text, but a display that could, via electromagic, display any words it needs to! It’s a bit of fakery, making something look more advanced than it actually is.
Chrysler really went all out with the look, even using it as a display typeface in commercials:
I mean, none of that really makes any sense. But they do it because it reminds you of advanced 1980s technology, which they’re hoping you’ll assume the K-Car is crammed full of! And that’s sort of true? A little?
It wasn’t just Chrysler doing this, of course. Look at this Volkswagen radio from the early 90s:
The more you think about this, the sillier it is. Sure, some radios had a digital tuning display, but this one had the old-school needle-and-dial look. Except VW decided to make the little printed numbers on the dial look like seven-segment digits, I guess in hope that maybe you’ll think, perhaps even subconsciously, oh, maybe this is a digital stereo? Wow!
It’s silly, just silly. Those are less legible numbers, and they’re masquerading as something they’re not. Come on!
I actually think Citroën maybe has the most disappointing example of this. This is from a second-gen Citroën CX, after Peugeot’s bean-counters got their hands on the car:
Those numbers are definitely seven-segment derived, even if the segement gaps are hidden. The form and shape is definitely the same. And they’re printed on analog gauges, which, of course, makes zero sense. Like, if those were individual little 2- and 3-digit displays, arranged on the dial, what would they do? Change from mph to kph, maybe, okay, that I can see. Anything else? No. Change the numbers from even to odd?
This is also disappointing because look at the dash design of the CX before this one:
It’s just one of the most amazing instrument clusters ever with those spinning drum gauges and the pods and, just everything!! It’s such a painful letdown into boring normalcy as it is, and to add the stupid seven-segment like type atop that, it just feels like getting kicked when you’re down.
That’s why I think seven-segment-derived typography on printed labels or on displays that are not constrained in the same way – like a modern LCD display or really any dot-matrix display – is so bad, and not just bad – deceptive. Well, if you’re deliberately doing a retro design, I think I’m okay with that. But, overall, I’m glad this trend is mostly gone, but it still shows up, commonly as a little time display in the corner of a full-color, high-resolution LCD screen, thinking I won’t notice.
But I do. Oh, I do.
At the beginning of the article I was thinking they were going to be the true 7 segment display like the CrAP image. And thinking couldn’t they have at least used the same 16 segment display which was in my 1978 Speak And Spell? At least those can represent almost anything. And I see that’s what they actually are.
The 16 segment display gets a pass, but barely. Looks to me like an early example of modern idiot gauges. Let’s make it look high tech when it’s really not. On the Lebaron with Siri’s grandma in the dash, sure. But not on an econobox Aries.
My personal instrument panel typeface annoyance is the penchant that began in the 90s to use “italicized”/slanted typefaces on performance cars. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember the original Porsche Boxter being among the first, if not the first to appear with this typographical abomination. It was then quickly picked up by Corvettes and other performance cars in an endless string of “Me Too!” copies.
It always strikes me as a cheap, cheesy attempt by stylists to convey “This car is fast so we’ll remind you by making the instruments’ legends look fast!”
It’s gimmick and it does nothing to improve readability; it may even hamper it. Clean, clear sans-serif or well-proportioned blockletter typefaces are far better for readability at a glance or in peripheral vision, which is what you want when you’re blasting through a series of hairpin turns at the edge of traction.
*Sigh*
But that’s just me…
As a primary school aged child in the late 80’s/early 90’s, I thought 7 segment displays, and by extension this font, were dead cool.
Dad brought his first computer home from work, a 286 complete with monochrome monitor. There wasn’t much fun to do on it – there was “Nibbles” (a Nokia Snake type game written in Q Basic) or Brøderbund’s “Banner Mania”.
Banner Mania had a font called “Crystal” that was 7 segment inspired. I would love going on that old heap of shit, making banners in all their 7 segment glory, and printing them out on the noisy old monochrome dot-matrix.
Perhaps the UI designers of these cars were 7 or 8 year old Aussie kids?
I canNOT believe I’m the first commenter to think of this.
80085
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3MTA3
Also effective on a front license plate.
773440
I love Jason’s in depth articles about the little things.
The drum gauges were used as the speedo on other Citroens, even the cheaper GS if memory serves. They’re kind of weird when you’re used to dial gauges, but you get used to it. They have a bit of a spirit level bubble look to them.
The fake digital font on the analog radio reminds me of the first stereo system I bought. It was a real piece of junk all in one from Sears. Kind of like this one: https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sears_roeb_amfm_stereo_system_13291948350.html
The notable feature was the seven segment LED display for the radio tuner. Wow, I thought, a digital tuner what a bargain. Turned out though that it was an analog tuner with this cheesy digital display as a weird add-on controlled by an internal belt mechanism.
I’m surprised you failed to mention the use of the progenitor to Comic Sans (released in 1994) to differentiate the Dodge of Monaco of 1990-1992 from the Eagle Premier from which it was badge-engineered. The idea for this came from none other than Lee Iacocca himself, after he decided the Monaco would appeal “to da kidz” (sic) after efforts to fit a landau roof complete with bars and coach lamps failed due to the Premier’s aerodynamic shape.
TIL about the Dodge Monaco. I’ve never seen one. Didn’t know they even existed. Did they all rust away? Or get crushed during cash for clunkers?
Those cars were such crap that they were falling apart by 1997. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a running one.
Oh, gawd! Must you mention the typeface-whose-name-must-not-be-mentioned? When I worked as the visual communication designer in the late 1990s, I had to put up with some of obnoxious customers who decided which typeface to use for their printed material.
One customer wanted this typeface-whose-name-must-not-be-mentioned for her curriculum vitae. Yes, really! I explained to her why it would not work in this regard and suggested different typeface instead. She blared at me, “I PAID YOU TO DESIGN THE FUCKING RÉSUMÉ!” A couple of months later, she came back and demanded the refund, blaming us for the “bad design” that prevented her from getting any callbacks for interviews. Oh, gee…
I hope you kept notes!
I do like that the Citroen fuel gauge reads 0, 1/2, 4/4 even if the typeface is dumb.
Not a dashboard label, but the covers of the owners manuals for 1984 Oldsmobiles had the title written in LCD-style segments but superimposed on the drawing of a desktop computer’s CRT screen. Even as a 5th grader I thought, “Jesus, that makes no sense.”
here’s an example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/314700629208?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=314700629208&targetid=1645685073328&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9021712&poi=&campaignid=20133407470&mkgroupid=147476396765&rlsatarget=pla-1645685073328&abcId=9312979&merchantid=8269064&gclid=CjwKCAjw7oeqBhBwEiwALyHLM8KqJXby2mlYZ2sDYkYlcVx-fuSPWz-KhSa4-JQszJfqxunNpHvpERoCwEwQAvD_BwE
That’s amazing. I remember that style and it never occurred to me until you mentioned it.
You can highlight the text and click on the “chain” icon to enter the URL…
“Here’s an example.”
@Torch can we talk about how GM hasn’t changed their (analog) gauge fonts since the 80s? Every single car on sale until displays took over used the same garbage font and it hurts my soul. In typical GM-world, I’m sure there’s a totally bureaucratic, totally bizarre justification for it that I’d love to learn more about!
Just to be contrarian, I have to disagree. GM’s block typefaces may not be pretty but they’re highly readable at a glance and they’re unmistakably identifiable as GM. I seem to remember reading somewhere (admittedly, it may have been GM press or promotional material) that they spent a lot of money and time on designing their typefaces for maximum readability and therefore safety, and that they absolutely did it with the intent of using them on every. single. vehicle. that they built. And the sheer ubiquity and family resemblance also contributed to the cohesive GM brand identity.
Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I expected happened. To a T. Extremely ugly, in use for way too long, but backed up by a huge amount of corporate spending supporting it. I wholy expect that’s their justification, but at the end of the day, an ugly product is an ugly product. And this ugly product was on sale for decades.
What cars are those clusters from in that lead image?
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/instruments2.jpg
In Peugeot’s beancounters’ defense:
Citroen has been owned by them since the mid 70s, they never had to “get their hands on it”. If anything, they should have, to avoid the atrocious dashboard experiments of the first gen BX.The font of the post-1986 restyled Citroen BX was a purely Citroen choice – at the same time, its sister (the Peugeot 405) had a not too different, still Jaeger-made gauge cluster with very different, nice-looking font.The BX was not alone with thhis font. The CX Turbo 2 had the same ugly stuff. It was considered sporty for some reason.
This is making me want a CX Pallas.
The real silliest part of Chrysler using it is the contrast between the faux-futuristic font and all of Iaccoca’s Brougham impulses on display – the cheap fake wood, the fake stitching, the chrome (and you know if there was a way to fit a vinyl roof to the Magicwagons they would’ve done it). Although, maybe there’s room for that aesthetic to take over from Steampunk. Call it Malaiserquest or something.
I just rewatched the original Predator movie this week and was admiring the way they made an alien version of the seven-segment type at the end when the Predator initiates the self-destruct device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m7hPlL-v4A
Dat art nouveau… Mmmm.
I’ll say this, there’s plenty of questionable choices in a lot of eras.
The S197 Mustang retro-ed the ’60s with its main gauges (numbers oriented radially, not vertically), and it’s not the easiest to actually read at a glance.
I’ve got a 2011 Tiguan (base model) and the odometer and trip numbers are in seven segment even when the words ‘trip’ and ‘miles’ on the same screen is in a standard font
https://www.mytiguan.com/attachments/photo-5-jpg.5657/
My 2010 Focus does the same thing! I enjoy the (esp. for the era) cheapness inherent in going that direction.
She also has some 16-segment readouts for the radio display, and I enjoy the wonkiness of some of the lettering.
Are the static legends etched and backlit? Or just printed white?
A rant about automotive typography: This is exactly why I love this site.
What we need is a follow up about typefaces and typesetting in car badging and word marks.
Back in the same K-car era as the fake message center they had a version with a speech synthesizer in it so the car would SAY: A Door Is A Jar. Which of course everyone wanted to show off “Look my car talks!” and leaving the door ajar was the easiest thing to do to make it talk. Come to think of it, that could have been the only thing it was able to say…And of course, a door is not a jar, it’s a door.
was it really a synthesizer? I remember some manufacturers used a tiny disk and a needle thing like a record player.
It talked exactly like the speech synthesizer in my TI99/4a, let’s just say that.
that works for me.
Hey, that thing did a credible job with Mr. Spock’s voice on the Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator game!
Yeah Datsun did that for a while
Chrysler was the first one to use a chip, but Datsun was the first automaker with cars that spoke in tongues, and they used the little record player.
I remember we had one as a rental on vacation, my Mom never seemed to get tired of yelling “no, its not a jar, its a fucking door!” at it.
Its just trying to gaslight you.
My ’84 Chrysler Laser had that, but it had a sort of automotive Tourette’s. It would randomly give me false messages: “YOUR ENGINE COOLANT IS LOW. PROMPT SERVICE IS REQUIRED.” Or “YOUR TRUNK LID IS AJAR.” The digital dash would randomly change brightness on its own, too. I think that car was possessed.
My wife worked at an office with a Japanese talking copying machine. The paper sensor one morning and it whined all day, “Please Add Paper, PLEASE add Paper..”
They finally had to unplug the machine for three days till they couod getcit fixed. It worked fine, but that damn voice!
It could have been worse. Imagine if it had just kept repeating “PC Load Letter” over and over again…
Sounds like it’s time for screwdrivers and wire cutters.
I could put up with that shit but only if the prior owner was famous and left me a chewed pencil in the glove box.
Yeah, but your cars prior owner spelled it John.
And it came with Barbara Mandrell’s skateboard in the trunk
Keep the skate board, I would be happy with Barbara (1980 version).
I’ve seen in the news that there’s a severe shortage of Adderall in the country, but I had no idea it was this serious. Sure glad your passion is cars and not world domination.
Where’s Walter White and Jessie Pinkman when you need them?
Even worse (to me) was the 70s ‘Computer Font’, which I’m seeing is called Data70. I became a science fiction nerd back then, and that font was on almost every book I bought that decade. Actually, I think it went well into the 80s, too.
Yeah. That was another functional font too, designed to be readable by early OCR systems. Somehow I don’t think the sci-fi cover art needed that either.
I swear every single Larry Niven book I bought before I could drink had that font on the cover.
Like Trent Reznor
It’s simply a product of its time, like any other design choice. And I think the article is vastly underselling how much heavy-lifting this typeface was doing in terms of conveying “high-tech” during that time period. So what if it’s “just” printed rather than being a display? As a typeface, it is absolutely doing its job. If you’re old enough to remember that era, then you’ll know that people ate this stuff up.
In hindsight, no, it doesn’t look aesthetically beautiful. But it does have a certain charm in its own right, at least to someone like me who remembers the era fondly.
Agree. If anything, Torch understates the impact of this in the ’80s as a signal of futuristic.
It conveyed progress toward something that still lived mostly in our imagination, in a time when tvs still often came in wooden cabinets, you had a phone in the kitchen with an extra long cord, and most record stores were half vinyl.
The Predator (1987) had this on the wristwatch/timer! This tech wasn’t just future, it was space!
That’s right! I now remember Arnold looking at what was clearly a countdown in growing understanding of what was going to happen really soon. TO DA CHOPPA!
Also, keep in mind that that LeBaron was likely sold to the same sorts of people who need to hear all sorts of ridiculous bleeps and bloops in order to be able to recognize that computers in movies and TV shows are doing things, it made them feel like they had purchased a piece of high tech every bid as cutting edge as what those Japanese were doing, despite what the padded vinyl roof might make you believe.
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” – Douglas Adams
^ COTD
“A time when men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
I would like to add one small point about printed labels matching the font used on the ‘dynamic’ labels. Sure the ‘Calculator font’ looked weird, but it you used a different one you’d have two different fonts…which looks really bad too.
Sorry I am a Luddite and if it isn’t analog it is a poor substitute. Though I think typeface prefaced dates more than anything else. Consider how electric dash is now 70s.
7-segment displays are analog 😀
Keep on ranting, Torch. Man, I’ll bet your wife is glad you have this outlet. I know we all are!
All the significant others of all of us are glad the Autopian exists…even if they don’t know it!
Their lives could be SO much more annoying! haha