Prison Gothic Typeface of Hong Kong Road Signs

According to the Road Research Society, starting in the 1970s until May of 1997, road signs in Hong Kong were handmade by prisoners. Inmates would carve the Chinese characters by hand, and the resulting text style has now become known as Prison Gothic. 

The Road Research Society is a small volunteer group that records Prison Gothic. They aim to document the hand-carved visuals of the older signs, as post-May 1997 signs use digital fonts instead. This project emphasizes the need to protect and document the influential design involvement of prisoners, as members of the working class and marginalized communities. These incarcerated members of society were contributing to public infrastructure design, which should be valued and recognized in Hong Kong's design landscape's history. 

The overall process for digital revival took six years of development and included photographing older signs that used Prison Gothic, of which there were only about 500 left. The hand-carved nature of Prison Gothic road signs meant characters often varied from sign to sign. To replicate this quality, the Road Research Society has created an Alternate Glyphs function. The font contains 13,000 characters and is an important effort in collecting local culture. 

The cultural preservation of Prison Gothic was the result of work by those who had enough access to the tools, skills, and funding needed to do so. It is available at a full price of HK$2,500 or in US currency at $334.91. 

The Road Research Society's website notes: “The perceptual license is for one person/company use only and can be installed on two devices. It may also be used for commercial purposes. However, acceptable use excludes trademark registration, embedding of font files into web servers, mobile apps, or transmission of font files to third parties.” 

Considering the circumstances of Prison Gothic, one may contemplate who should have ownership and possibly debate whether its use should be monetized.