Continued implementation of BBC Reith

Monotype have a monopoly on licensing Helvetica and they know they can get top dollar given its ubiquity (and in fairness, it is a classic font). Given the categories the BBC used it for (digital graphics and broadcast) it's not surprising someone worked out it's cheaper in the long run to commission their own font.

BBC Reith has serif and sans-serif variants at various weights (condensed, light, medium, regular, bold) and some extended character sets (non-English language glyphs and a few other symbols). A bit of an educated guess based on figures I've seen for other fonts, but all together the font set probably cost about £400-500,000.

I'd be quite surprised if it cost over a million. Bruno Maag (of Dalton Maag) went on record a few years ago saying 'a price of ~$20-25k per weight is appropriate for a Western European glyph set with three years' exclusivity, and to own the rights, double the price.'

The BBC will definitely hold exclusive rights to Reith - no organisation would want their 'house' typeface being sold. They'll probably recoup the cost within a decade given how Reith is set to be used everywhere in-app, web and broadcast. The sooner Helvetica Neue is laid to rest, the better

I agree with the beeb making their own type face but imho it’s far to fussy and complicated....., very old fashioned,

Literally the best way ever to combat a reckon. Bravo! Welcome.

I assume Gill Sans was an exclusive BBC font, and of course these fonts only need to remain BBC exclusive as long as they require them to do so and could be a potential revenue stream once the BBC are done with them.

LNER was the first major organisation to use Gill Sans, back in 1929. They didn't have an exclusive licence either. Of course, Gill Sans is very closely linked to Johnston - as used by the Underground - both in terms of design and designers (Eric Gill worked on Johnston).

Goes back 68 more years than I thought then.

The BBC designing their own typeface isn’t a surprise, lots of companies in recent years have done the same.

But it's a waste of our licence moneys which will outrage the Daily Mail innit?

Some Reith popping up on the sub-index pages on the News website, eg: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk

Been like that for a while now

Oh, never mind then!

If they really want to ditch Gill Sans and Helvetica perhaps they should start using Rail Alphabet and Johnston. They're close enough substitutes, right? 😉