GILL SANS BENJAMIN FALL G 2 Fall
Fall MONOTYPE 1 GILL SANS BENJAMIN FALL g 2 Fall Gill Sans Edited and Designed by Benjamin Fall 2013 Fall Eric Gill, designer of the font Gill Sans, was not completely satisfied with Johnston Sans, the font of his mentor, Edward Johnston: “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. Some of these letters are not 3 entirely satisfactory, especially when it is remembered that, for such a purpose, an alpha- bet 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.” Eric Gill’s creativity allowed him to create Gill Sans, often hailed as the “Helvetica of England.” Just as the name implies, Gill Sans is a Humanist sans-serif font. The Gill Sans family includes light, regular, bold, extra bold, ultra bold, italic, condensed, and bold extra con- densed. It is more classical in proportion and has a more geometric feel than a mechani- cal one. Eric Gill intended for his font to function both in text and on display. Released in 1928, Gill Sans rose in popularity in 1929 when the London and North Eastern Railway adopted it as their standard typeface. The prominence of this use helped Gill Sans to become the preferred font of many British institutions, being widely used by the Church of England, the BBC, and Penguin Books, among others. Since 2006, Gill Sans has been freely distributed through Apple’s Operating System, as well as through Adobe’s Creative Suite.
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