thumb|right|A London Underground map of the [[Heathrow Airport loop and Terminal 5 stub on the Piccadilly line with text in the New Johnston typeface]]
thumb|upright|Johnston printing blocks in the [[London Transport Museum]]
Johnston (or Johnston Sans) is a sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, commercial manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (also known as 'The Underground Group'), as part of his plan to strengthen the company's corporate identity. Johnston was originally created for printing (with a planned height of 1 inch or 2.5 cm), but it rapidly became used for the enamel station signs of the Underground system as well.
It has been the corporate font of public transport in London since the foundation of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, and of predecessor companies since its introduction in 1916, making its use one of the world's longest-lasting examples of corporate branding. It was a copyrighted property of the LPTB's successor, Transport for London, until Public Domain Day 2015 (Johnston died in 1944).
Johnston's work originated the genre of the humanist sans-serif typeface, typefaces that are sans-serif but take inspiration from traditional serif fonts and Roman inscriptions. His student Eric Gill, who worked on the development of the typeface, later used it as a model for his own Gill Sans, released from 1928. As a corporate font, Johnston was not available for public licensing until recently, and as such Gill Sans has become more widely used.
Features
thumb|The lettering on [[Trajan's Column, respected by Arts and Crafts artisans as among the best ever drawn; many signs and engravings created with an intentionally artistic design in the early twentieth century in Britain are based on it.]]
thumb|left|A drawing and photographed carving of the Trajan capitals by Johnston's pupil [[Eric Gill. Johnston considered a lower-case 'q' in the capital form, a design seen in some calligraphy.]]
The capitals of the typeface are based on Roman square capitals such as those on the Column of Trajan, and the lower-case on traditional serif fonts. Johnston greatly admired Roman capitals, writing that they "held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions."
Johnston's alphabet marked a break with the kinds of sans serif then popular, now normally known as grotesques, which tended to have squarer shapes inspired by signwriting and Didone type of the period. Some aspects of the alphabet are geometric: the letter O is a nearly perfect circle and the 'M', unlike Roman capitals (but like Caslon) straight-sided. As with most serif fonts, the 'g' is a 'two-storey' design. The 'l' copies the curl of the 't' and produces a rather wide letter compared to most sans-serif fonts.