'Prison Gothic' - Hong Kong road signs reborn as new font

Gary Yau standing in front of a street sign that was manually designed and handmade by prison inmates between the 1970s and 1990s. - AFP

HONG KONG, July 27 (AFP): Handmade in jail, the Chinese characters on Hong Kong's old road signs have a distinct style that a group of enthusiasts has painstakingly documented and turned into a new digital font -- "Prison Gothic".

Their leader, Gary Yau, says he became interested in them when he was a boy, even learning to write some characters by copying them from road signs.