[arch-general] unreadable characters login screen after install

[niya levi via arch-general]

hi everyone
after an install following the wiki installation guide and rebooting
the login  screen shows unreadable characters,
the char displays as rectangular and square blocks,
locale.conf is set to LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
vconsole.conf is set to KEYMAP=uk
i also tried adding a FONT= line to vconsole.conf while chrooted the but
no joy after rebooting,
the installation screen was fine.
any ideas ?