It can be seen everywhere, used (or overused) on everything from corporate logos to movie posters-one industry that has actually embraced the unusual Ultra Bold. Today over two dozen Gill Sans designs are available digitally, with mainstream reach thanks to its inclusion on Mac OS X and Microsoft Office. The typeface was initially recommended for advertising and headline use, but as the public got used to reading sans-serif, Gill Sans turned out to work just as well for body text. Gill’s lettering is based on classic roman proportions, which give the sans-serif a less mechanical feel than its geometric contemporaries. The Gill Sans family ranges from Light to the exaggerated Ultra Bold-“because every advertisement has to try and shout down its neighbors,” Gill explains in Essay on Typography. Monotype Imaging Inc, Hidden Gems: Gill Sans The regular font has a more compact and muscular appearance, with its flat-bottomed ‘d’, flat-topped ‘p’ and ‘q’, and short, triangular-topped ‘t.’ The bold font tends to echo the softer, more open style of the light, while the extra bold and ultra bold have their own vivid personalities. The light font, with its heavily kerned ‘f’ and tall ‘t’, has an open, elegant look. …each weight retains a distinct character of its own. The typeface is renowned for its inconsistencies between weights, as they were not mechanically produced from a single design (opposed to others like Helvetica). Originally released as metal type, over 36 derivatives emerged between 19-many of which were created by the Monotype drawing office (with input by Gill). Many other notable companies (particularly in England) adopted Gill Sans as a corporate typeface by the mid-1900’s, including the BBC, British Railways, and ultimately Monotype themselves-making the typeface Monotype's fifth best seller of the twentieth century. The typeface was used in 1935 by designer Edward Young on the now iconic Penguin Books jacket design, putting Gill Sans on bookshelves around the world. Left: LNER Bittern’s nameplate set in Gill Sans, built 1937 (Photo: Crowcombe Al, Flickr) Right: The Kraken Wakes published by Penguin Books in 1955 (Photo: duncan, Flickr) Gill Sans rose to popularity in 1929 when it became the standard typeface for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), appearing on everything from locomotive nameplates to time tables. While his personal life was later discovered to be rather controversial, Eric Gill (born 1882 as Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, died 1940) was an important British sculptor, artist, and typeface designer who also gave us Perpetua and Joanna (named after one of his daughters), among others. Left: Eric Gill as a young man, 1908 (Photo: Harry Ransom Center) Right: Drawing by Eric Gill, 1933 (Photo: St Bride Library via ) The font was released commercially by Monotype in 1928 as Gill Sans. A Monotype advisor, Morison commissioned Gill to develop a complete font family to compete with the sans-serif designs released by German foundries fueled by the overwhelming success of Futura. The alphabet, which at the time only contained uppercase letters, was noticed by Stanley Morison for its commercial potential. Gill also sketched a guide for the bookshop owner, Douglas Cleverdon, who later published the work in A Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon. Eric Gill, Essay on Typography, published 1931ĭrawing heavily on Johnston’s work, Gill first experimented with his ‘improvements’ in 1926 when he hand-painted lettering for a bookshop sign in his hometown, Bristol. Some of these letters are not entirely satisfactory, especially when it is remembered that, for such a purpose, an alphabet should be as near as possible ‘fool-proof’… as the philosophers would say-nothing should be left to the imagination of the sign-writer or enamel-plate maker. The first notable attempt to work out the norm for plain letters was made by Mr Edward Johnston when he designed the sans-serif letter for the London Underground Railways. Not completely satisfied with Johnston’s work, Gill set out to create the perfect, legible typeface. Left: Johnston Sans printing blocks now on display at the London Transport Museum, 1913 (Photo: Kaihsu Tai, Wikipedia) Right: London's Underground roundel set in Johnston Sans (often confused as Gill Sans), designed 1919 (Photo: danorbit, Flickr) Creating a ‘fool-proof’ typeface Eric Gill, who had studied under Johnston at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts, later became a friend and apprentice-and even had a small role assisting in creation of the proprietary typeface. The history of Gill Sans stems from Edward Johnston’s iconic typeface, Johnston Sans, designed for the London Underground in 1913. Called the “ Helvetica of England,” the sixth installment in our ‘Know your type’ series is the humanist sans-serif Gill Sans.
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