The Streets of London project was first initiated by Boris Kochan of Kochan & Partner design agency in Munich. Strolling around some time ago in the London borough of Kensington he had stumbled across some “pretty darn nice R’s” on a street sign which thereupon found their way into the agency’s logo. After some years had past he came up with the idea of expanding the majuscule street sign alphabet to a complete typeface containing lowercase letters and all characters required to compose fully serviceable fonts. In need of a type designer able to realize this he addressed himself to Robert Strauch of Lazydogs Typefoundry. Intrigued by the challenge Robert started off with thoroughly digitizing the original London signage letters which turned out to be a unique design of the British stone cutter David Kindersley (1915–1995). Fortunate circumstances brought Boris and Robert together with his wife Lida Lopes Cardozo Kindersley who kindly gave access to the original drawings of David’s letter designs. Being able to build up on such an authentic base Robert’s work on the lowercase letter design was led by thoughtfully interpreting the specific character of David Kindersley’s creation. By treating the original aspects with great respect but still adding some modern features in a sensitive way the expansion evolved step by step resulting in a complete OpenType Regular font. Inspired by the process Robert invented stylistically consistent Italics, Small Caps and a Bold style thus setting up a font family ready for use in various typographic contexts. The outcome is a typeface grounded on the historic roots of mid-20th century South England yet impregnated with a contemporary look that derives markedly from today’s mainstream of type design. Streets of London is a typeface naturally adequate for signage and lettering but its newly achieved qualities make it also suitable for a much wider range of applications such as magazine, newspaper or book typography. Due to its very robust shapes and harmonious proportions Streets of London is highly legible and stands its ground dealing with large amounts of text.

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