Commercial · Sans serif · Frere-Jones Type
Interstate
Interstate is a licensed font from Frere-Jones Type: $60, as printed on the foundry or reseller’s page on 2026-09-05. The 3 open-licence families below are suggested in its place, each with the basis for the substitution.
The name above is set in a fallback face. Interstate is a licensed font and there is no file here to show it in; the foundry’s page has the real specimen.
- Designer
- Tobias Frere-Jones
- Styles
- 36
- Classification
- Sans serif
- Price
- $60 (per font; complete family $650. Price fields read from frerejones.com’s GraphQL data (fontFacePrice / completePrice), which the font page renders as US dollar amounts.) — as printed, read 2026-09-05
- Trial
- The foundry offers a trial download.
Sans derived from Highway Gothic, the US federal road-signage lettering developed from 1949. Frere-Jones redrew every shape and added missing characters; 36 fonts in Normal, Condensed and Compressed widths.
Free alternatives to Interstate
Suggested, not measured
Typecase measures fonts from their outlines. Interstate is not on this machine, so these were chosen by what is known about it — classification, lineage, common use — and each is labelled with that basis. Open one to see its measured character and neighbours.
Quiet luxury, approachable
The Overpass webfont did not load here — this is a fallback face, not Overpass.
derived
Overpass is an open adaptation of the same Highway Gothic signage lettering that Interstate is built on, so the skeletons are closely related; Overpass is more regularised.
Quiet luxury, approachable
The Barlow webfont did not load here — this is a fallback face, not Barlow.
same classification
A slightly rounded low-contrast grotesque with a similar utilitarian feel and three widths.
Quiet luxury, approachable
The Roboto Condensed webfont did not load here — this is a fallback face, not Roboto Condensed.
commonly substituted
Condensed grotesque often used where Interstate Condensed would be; less quirky letterforms.
Own Interstate? Point the app at the file and this list becomes measured: every open family ranked by how close it actually is, with the difference named. The file never leaves your machine.
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