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. Today, Gill Sans is used on movie posters includ- ing those for Toy Story and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, as well as for companies such as BBC World News, Tommy Hilfiger, eHarmony, SEPTA, and Saab Automobile. The varying eccentricities of Gill Sans are what make it such a unique and interesting font. The two-weighted “a” fits all of the strokes without becoming cluttered. The letters “b,” “d,” “p,” and “q,” are spurless on certain weights and styles while keeping them on“ others. The range of weights appears darker and less evenly distributed than other similar typefaces. THERE ARE NOW ABOUT AS MANY DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF LETTERS AS THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOLS. Editor’s Note Editor’s “ -ERIC GILL 4 Fall Table of Contents Fall 2..................................Title Page 3...............................Editor’s Note 5 4...........................Table of Contents 6....................................Eric Gill 8..........................History of Gill Sans 10...........................Underground 12..................................Gill Sans 14. Reevaluating Gill Sans 16. Overused and Misunderstood 18..............................Sources 6 Fall Eric Eric Gill – born 22. 2. 1882 Gillin Brighton, England, died 17. 11. 1940 in Uxbridge, England – sculptor, graphic artist, type designer. Studied at the Chichester Technical and Art School. 1899–1903: works in an architect’s office. Takes lessons in lettering with Edward Johnston at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. 1905– 09: produces initials and book covers for Insel publishers in Leipzig. 1906: designs & inititals for Ashedene Fall Press. 1907: moves to Ditchling, Sussex. Here he produces stone sculptures, including for the BBC building in London. 7 1914: produces sculptures for the stations of the cross in Westminster Cathedral in London. 1924: moves to Capel-y- ffin. 1925–31: works for the Golden Cockerell Press (initials, illustrations and an exclusive text type). 1928: moves to Pigotts near High Wycombe. Works for London Underground’s administrative headquarters. With his son-in-law he founds his own hand-press which prints luxury bibliophile editions. 1930: illustrations for the last number of “The Fleuron” magazine. 1937: designs a postage stamp which is in use for 15 years. 1936: made a Royal Designer for Industry. 1938: produces stone tablets for the League of Nations building in Geneva. Fonts: Gill Sans® (1927–30), Golden Cockerell Roman (1929), Perpetua® (1929–30), Solus (1929), Joanna® (1930–31), Aries (1932), Floriated Capitals™ (1932), Bunyan, Pilgrim (1934), Jubilee (1934). Publications include: “Essay on Typography”, London 1931; “Autobiography”, London 1940. R. Speaight “The Life of Eric Gill”, London 1966; R. Brewer “Eric Gill”, London 1966; R. Brewer “Eric Gill, the man who loved letters”, London 1973; R. Harling “The letter forms and type design of Eric Gill”, Westerham 1976; F. MacCarthy “Eric & Gill”, New York 1989. 8 Fall History of In 1926 Gill was asked to paint a shop sign for a Bristol bookseller, Douglas Cleverdon. It was this lettering that led Morison to suggest that Gill create a sans-serif that was beginning to become popular. The letterform Gill had created for the shop was only a capital alphabet and he embarked on the design aware of the greater difficulties of constructing a even monoline lowercase alphabet, which involved many curves and junctions. Gill’s resulting sans-serifs were firmly modeled on classic roman proportions. Gill was able to introduce refinements, which, with the help of the Monotype drawing office, have established Gill Sans as a much-loved classic among sans-serifs. Gill Sans has a friendly warmth and is classified as a humanist sans-serif. The series was originally produced as a hot-metal letterpress type, so when it was digitalized it is most likely that the original Monotype office drawings were used. Gill Sans now has an extensive range of weights, from light through to ultra bold with italics and Old-style figures. In addition there are only two display weights of condensed, and two decorative fonts: Gill Sans Light Shadowed, and a titling Gill Sans Shadowed. Gill Sans has a smaller x-height than some 20th- Century available only in one size, with minimal variations. sans-serifs. It can be effective with more leading than the Johnston’s alphabet was used extensively by London standard 20 percent of body size. Sizes below 9-point will Transport for nearly 50 years. After a decade of benefit from a minimal increase in tracking. Gill Sans con- disuse, it was revived by Colin Banks and John Miles sists of a family of weights and forms that happily lack the in the 1980s. The Banks & Miles digital version uniformity of weight increase designed into many sans-serifs. named New Johnston is not widely available as of Gill offers an assortment of forms that can be refreshing to yet, compared to Gill’s popular face.v experiment with. The humanist sans serifs spanned the chasm between two very different typographic genres: Gill Sans was designed for railway use. Similar to Johnston’s Gserif and sans-serif typefaces. Sans-serif faces often sans serif, Gill Sans is more refined and distinctive. Eric Gill endured the scorn of critics who regarded them replaced Johnston’s diamonds over the ‘i’ and ‘j’ with round merely as roman letters with their serifs, and con- dots He also simplified the lowercase ‘l’ in comparison to sequently their beauty, extracted. Others disagreed, the hooked ‘l’ in Johnston’s alphabet. Notable differences in however, and embraced the idea of a typographic the uppercase include the open counters in Gill’s ‘S’ and the form stripped of ornament and decoration. By humanistic stroke and joinery on the tail of the ‘Q’. Gill Sans 1930, the geometric sans serifs had arrived, with has points at the base of the ‘V’ and the ‘W’ in contrast with Paul Renner’s Futura as their acclaimed leader. the flat bases of Johnston’s letters. Monotype manufactured Proponents praised Futura and faces like it for Gill Sans in 1927; ultimately it consisted of 24 related series, the adjusted widths and proportions, monotone S Fall characters, and interchangeability of typographic British sculptor, artist, and typeface designer who compromise between traditional roman typefaces also gave us Perpetua and Joanna (named after one and the new geometrics. The humanist sans serifs of his daughters), among others. Gill Sans rose to were designed for this purpose; they spanned the popularity in 1929 when it became the standard 9 gap between serifs and sans serifs while drawing on typeface for the London and North Eastern Railway the best features of each. (LNER), appearing on everything from locomotive nameplates to time tables. The typeface was used in Gill Sans was based on the same sources as Johnston, 1935 by designer Edward Young on the now iconic though Gill distinguished the two faces by saying Penguin Books jacket design, putting Gill Sans on that his own was designed to be read as a text face bookshelves around the world. Many other notable whereas Johnston’s was intended purely for signs. Gill companies (particularly in England) adopted Gill had used san serif lettering for signs in his at Capel- Sans as a corporate typeface by the mid-1900s, y-Ffin and for the lettering on a Bristol Bookshop including the BBC, British Railways, and ultimately owned by Douglas Cleverdon, which Gill painted in Monotype themselves—making the typeface Mono- 1927. It was this bookshop sign, which suggested the type’s fifth best seller of the twentieth century. idea of a Gill sans serif to Morison. Originally released as metal type, over 36 deriv- Drawing heavily on Johnston’s work, Gill first ex- atives emerged between 1929 and 1932—many perimented with his ‘improvements’ in 1926 when of which were created by the Monotype drawing he hand-painted lettering for a bookshop sign in office (with input by Gill). The typeface is renowned his hometown, Bristol. Gill also sketched a guide for its inconsistencies between weights, as they for the bookshop owner, Douglas Cleverdon, who were not mechanically produced from a single later published the work in A Book of Alphabets design (opposed to others like Helvetica).