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Fran Sans Essay — Emily Sneddon

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EMILY SNEDDON INFO Written by EMILY SNEDDON Published on 6TH NOVEMBER 2025 Fran Sans is a display font in every sense of the term. It’s an interpretation of the destination displays found on some of the light rail vehicles that service the city of San Francisco. SFMTA Photo Department I say some because destination displays aren’t consistently used across the city’s transit system. In fact, SF has an unusually high number of independent public transit agencies. Unlike New York, Chicago or L.A., which each have one, maybe two, San Francisco and the greater Bay Area have over two dozen. Each agency, with its own models of buses and trains, use different destination displays, creating an eclectic patchwork of typography across the city. Among them, one display in particular has always stood out to me: the LCD panel displays inside Muni’s Breda Light Rail Vehicles. I remember first noticing them on a Saturday in October on the N-Judah, heading to the Outer Sunset for a shrimp hoa

Fran Sans Essay — Emily Sneddon EMILY SNEDDON INFO Written by EMILY SNEDDON Published on 6TH NOVEMBER 2025 Fran Sans is a display font in every sense of the term. It’s an interpretation of the destination displays found on some of the light rail vehicles that service the city of San Francisco. SFMTA Photo Department I say some because destination displays aren’t consistently used across the city’s transit system. In fact, SF has an unusually high number of independent public transit agencies. Unlike New York, Chicago or L.A., which each have one, maybe two, San Francisco and the greater Bay Ar

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