Telephone box font
When designing the signage for the conversion of a telephone box into a defibrillator kiosk, I came across a question with no answer: what is the font used for the ‘TELEPHONE’ lettering on traditional red telephone boxes? There’s no answer because it isn’t really a font: it’s hand drawn lettering.
The word ‘TELEPHONE’ on the traditional red phone box is quite distinctive. Apart from experimental flings with corporate typefaces in the ’80s (yellow Gill Sans on black) and ’90s (Bell Italic), telephone boxes have always displayed a unique set of lettering.
It’s unique because it’s hand drawn: it’s even slightly wonky, with the ‘central’ bar of the T being slightly to the left of centre.
So I made a font to match.
K6 Telephone – the red phone box font
If you’d like to use your own wording on a traditional phone box, now you can. I designed the ‘K6 Telephone’ font specifically for the illuminated glass signs of red telephone boxes, and it is available to download and use free of charge.
It’s a very simple font: it’s all capitals, with numbers and basic punctuation. It’s slightly narrower than the original TELEPHONE lettering (to be precise, it’s designed to fit the word ‘defibrillator’ on the glass) but you can stretch it to fit as you want.
It’s the ideal telephone box font for a K6 phone box.
And, yes, it’s slightly wonky.
DEFIBRILLATOR phone box signage
If you’d just like the word ‘DEFIBRILLATOR’ in authentic lettering at the right size for a red telephone box conversion, then you can download a PDF below.
