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GILL SANS BENJAMIN FALL g 2 Fall

Gill Sans Edited and Designed by Benjamin Fall 2013 Fall , designer of the Gill Sans, was not completely satisfied with Sans, the font of his mentor, : “The first notable attempt to work out the norm for plain letters was made by Mr Edward Johnston when he designed the sans- letter for the 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 “ 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 . 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 , 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 .

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 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 “” 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 .

Fonts: Gill Sans® (1927–30), Golden Cockerell Roman (1929), ® (1929–30), (1929), ® (1930–31), Aries (1932), Floriated Capitals™ (1932), Bunyan, Pilgrim (1934), Jubilee (1934).

Publications include: “Essay on ”, 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 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 : 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 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 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). The Gill for Douglas Cleverdon. The alphabet, which at the Sans family ranges from Light to the exaggerated time only contained uppercase letters, was noticed Ultra Bold—“because every advertisement has by for its commercial potential. A to try and shout down its neighbors,” Gill explains Monotype advisor, Morison commissioned Gill to in Essay on Typography. Gill’s lettering is based on develop a complete font family to compete with classic roman proportions, which give the sans-serif ill the sans-serif designs a less mechanical feel than its geometric contem- released by German poraries. The typeface was initially recommended foundries fueled by the for advertising and headline use, but as the public overwhelming success got used to reading sans-serif, Gill Sans turned out of Futura. The font was to work just as well for body text. Today over two released commercially dozen Gill Sans designs are available digitally, with by Monotype in 1928 mainstream reach thanks to its inclusion on Mac OS as Gill Sans. While his X and Office. It can be seen everywhere, personal life was later used (or overused) on everything from corporate discovered to be rather logos to movie posters—one industry that has G controversial, Eric Gill actually embraced the unusual Ultra Bold. Mean- (born 1882 as Arthur while, the legendary Johnston Sans typeface became Eric Rowton Gill, died available commercially for the first time in 1997 as 1940) was an important P22’s London Underground, licensed by the Museum. A variant called ITC Johnston Sans was also released 1999. 10 Fall UNDERGROUND INFLUENCED BY THE ‘UNDERGROUND The history of Gill Sans stems from Edward Johnston’s iconic typeface, Johnston Sans, designed for the London Underground in 1913. 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. CREATING A ‘FOOL-PROOF’ TYPEFACE Not completely satisfied with Johnston’s work, Gill set out to create the perfect, legible typeface. Drawing heavily on Johnston’s work, Gill first experimented with his ‘im- provements’ in 1926 when he hand-painted lettering for a bookshop sign in his hometown, Bristol. Gill also sketched a guide for the bookshop owner, Douglas Cleverdon, who later published the work in A Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon. The alphabet, which at the time only contained up- percase letters, was noticed by Stanley Morison for its commercial potential. A Monotype advisor, Morison commissioned Gill to develop a complete font family to compete with the sans-serif designs released by Ger- man foundries fueled by the overwhelming success of Futura. The font was released commercially by Mono- type in 1928 as Gill Sans. While his personal life was later discovered to be rather controver- sial, 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. THE HELVETICA OF ENGLAND 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. The typeface was used in 1935 by designer Edward Young on the now iconic Penguin Books jacket design, putting Gill Sans on book- shelves around the world. Fall UNDERGROUND 11 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. A DIVERSE FAMILY Originally released as metal type, over 36 derivatives emerged between 1929 and 1932—many of which were created by the Monotype drawing office (with input by Gill). The typeface is renowned for its inconsistencies between weights, as they were not mechanically produced from a single design (opposed to others like Helvetica). 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. Gill’s lettering is based on classic roman proportions, which give the sans-serif a less mechanical feel than its geometric contemporaries. The typeface was initially recom- mended 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 SANS TODAY Today over two dozen Gill Sans designs are available digitally, with mainstream reach thanks to its inclusion on Mac OS X and . 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. Meanwhile, the legendary Johnston Sans typeface became available com- mercially for the first time in 1997 as P22’s London Underground, licensed by the . A variant called ITC Johnston was also released 1999. 12 Fall g Fall 13

Eric Gill (1882-1940) was a versatile talent, ILLactive in many disciplines from wood- SANS engraving to sculpture and . In the 1920s his creative abilities turned to type design and in 1928 Gill Sans was born.

The successful Gill Sans was issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill’s teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography.

Originally Gill designed this typeface as an uppercase set. The lowercase characters were added in 1929 and having spent much of the 1930s developing further weights and variations, Gill Sans now represents one of his most widely used typefaces.

The Pro version includes the original 17 cuts plus a few new cuts. All have been g extended in glyph sets from the Standard collection. Gill Sans is the Helvetica of England; ubiquitous, utilitarian There are three developmental forms of the Gill Sans and yet also quite specific in its ability to point to our lowercase ‘a’ on record; revisions were made at the Mono-

Fall notions of time and place. As a graphic designer’s in-joke type drawing office and passed back to Gill for approval. 14 once put it ‘Q. How do you do British post-war design? The original design for ‘a’ is strikingly similar to Johnston’s A. Set it in Gill Sans and print it in British Racing Green’. (as might be expected), followed by a second attempt As the preferred typeface of British establishments (the which was put into production and can be seen on early Railways, the Church, the BBC and Penguin Books), Gill specimen sheets. The third and least satisfactory character Sans is part of the British visual heritage just like the Union is seen in all versions of Gill Sans since the early 1930s. Jack and the safety pin. Stylistically it calls into question Gill’s deletion of the foot serif for the lowercase ‘l’ in Johnston’s model – a feature So to pick an argument with something that is akin to a which had an essential function within that alphabet, as it typographic national monument might appear unwise; it is allowed distinction between the numeral 1, uppercase ‘I’ so very much ‘ours’. But it is a flawed masterpiece. How and lowercase ‘l’. In Gill Sans (appointed typeface to a na- flawed? Well, monumentally flawed, in fact. In 2006, now tion of shopkeepers), this feature is absent and Monotype that Gill Sans is distributed freely with Apple’s OS X and were obliged to produce a complete alternate cut for Gill Adobe’s Creative Suite products, it is time to re-examine Sans, designated ‘F’ that included a ‘proper’ numeral 1 that those flaws. Ever since Gill Sans was incorporated into the could be used for numerical setting, such as shop window Adobe/Linotype library in the early 1990s what used to prices and timetables. This tradition, upheld by Monotype be Monotype Gill Sans became GillSans. The new com- until the early 1990s, was not carried forward to Adobe pound name and the missing foundry attribution serves to Gill Sans. distance today’s users of this type from any awareness that Monotype used to issue Gill Sans in a range of different Gill obliterated the terminus endings of the vertical stroke series with alternate cuts. Readers with experience of in ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q’; the Monotype drawing office again came metal and may recall this system, but for to his assistance and revised the forms so that they were now, the majority of us only have this ‘bundled’ version of preserved in the medium weight (this can be seen on ear- GillSans to go by. ly samples of the series 262). Today however, this feature only persists in the lightest weight of the digital GillSans. However, writing his Essay on Typography in 1931, Gill Gill Sans is the ‘New Black’: Revival or Reaction? claimed that Johnston’s letters were not entirely satisfac- One of the abiding eccentricities of Gill Sans is that its tory or ‘fool-proof’, and that his new Monotype Sans Serif, range of weights appears darker and less evenly distrib- the prototype of Gill Sans, was superior. Although other uted than any comparable face (even Futura is better writers have celebrated the individual qualities of Gill Sans moderated in this respect). Gill Sans Light (series 362) may Q, R, a, g and t, as designs in their own right, I contend that equate to the book, normal or even the regular weight in the majority of character shapes in Gill Sans are actually other typefaces, just as Gill Sans Medium (series 262) looks worse than in Johnston’s design of fifteen years previous. like boldface in comparison, and Gill Sans Bold (series 275) Gill Sans achieved its pre-eminence because of the mighty is already well on the way to what Gill himself called Gill marketing clout of the Monotype Corporation and the Sans Double Elefans. A likely reason for this is that Gill, as a self-serving iconoclasm of its author. Thus, rather than John- stonecarver and sculptor, had his ideas about the apparent ston’s lettering, it was Gill Sans that became the English desirability of darker types formed by the ideals of the national style of the mid-century. There were other, arguably better, typefaces derived from the ideal of making a monoline sans serif based on humanist structures. That this project has returned to inform some of the really great type design of the last fifteen years is a testament to how the problem was not solved in 1928. sans Fall Arts and Crafts movement of William This is debatable – only with ‘J’ and ‘Q’ is there a potential argument about Morris nearly 50 years earlier. However it is their improvement. While most of the uppercase appear compromised perfectly clear from reading Gill’s own Essay against their Johnston counterparts, the significant demonstrations concern on Typography what he thought about the the simplest shapes. With uppercase E and F, Gill standardised the length 15 advisability of making extra bold weights of the lower and middle arms to match the width of the topmost arm, of display typefaces: “…as many different narrowing the overall widths of both letters to compensate. This alters the varieties of letters as there are different letterforms’ balance in direct contradiction to the idea that he was some- kinds of fools. I myself am responsible for how preserving classical proportions. While Gill narrowed the proportions designing five different sorts of sans-serif of the M, his version of L, N and T are all much wider than in Johnston’s letters – each one thicker and fatter than alphabet. Crucially this also makes extra white space around the letter- the last because every advertisement has forms – therefore N and T dominate the appearance of Gill Sans with their to try and shout down its neighbours.” broad diagonal and open white space, requiring extra care with kerning and letterspacing. Aside from inconsistencies of the weights in Gill Sans, Gill changed proportions between capital height, stroke width and reevaluating character width. This leads me to disagree with the many descriptions of the design of Gill Sans that still contend that the typeface is “based on Roman character shapes and proportions” or “does not reject traditional forms and proportions”. sansgill Overused and aMisunderstood Q ‘Gill Sans, is he mad?’, I hear you cry. Well, Gill Sans, as well as Helvetica, are perhaps the two typefaces I use the most. I have a love / hate relationship with them both, or rather with particular weights of both, but they are two typefaces which continue to surprise me with their beauty and versatility. As we’re all probably aware Gill Sans is a pretty standard font these days, used and abused as a result of being part of a default font installation on certain operating systems. Like , a lot of people have become tired of its expressive curves (yes, that’s right, I did say ‘expressive’). I’m hoping after reading this, at the very least, you’ll look upon Gill Sans with fresh eyes. A BIT OF HISTORY Gill Sans was designed by Eric Gill in the 1920’s and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. Eric Gill studied under the callig- rapher and stonemason, Edward Johnston, at the Central School in London so therefore it comes as no surprise that Gill Sans is based on his teachers typeface for London Underground, Johnston Underground. Due to it’s legibility and its ‘Britishness’, Gill Sans has been adopted by many companies and organisations as their corporate typeface. Notable mentions are: •BBC •Royal Society of Arts •The Church of England • Rail Not to mention the number of companies who have had typefaces designed which have been heavily influenced by Gill Sans. THE TYPEFACE ITSELF AND THAT HORRIBLE ‘A’ Gill Sans is a beautifully designed typeface which, unfortunately, has suffered at the hands of software, and to a certain extent, its own popularity. The charac- ters are hard, sculptured forms which clearly show Gill’s education and artistic roots. There’s the legibility of a serif face, balanced with the authority of a sans-serif. Gill Sans can seem friendly in its lighter weights, making it perfect for body text, and with its rounded letter forms and limited adornments, it’s highly legible. The bolder weights are perfect for display or signage purposes, but then there’s that ‘a’. If there’s one thing about Gill Sans that puts me off is the lower case ‘a’. Just look at it. Top heavy, unbalanced and well, just weird looking. LIVE WITH GILL SANS FOR ONE YEAR Early on in my college days, when I knew nowt, one of my typography lecturers was having a bit of a rant about typefaces. His main gripe was that with so many fonts at our disposal, designers and especially students, are like kids in a candy store and generally, he said, it was to the detriment to the design. ‘Learn to live with a typeface for one or two years, try to use nothing else but that face’. You can imagine the looks on our faces. However, due to corporate branding guidelines for the past three years I’ve been in that position in my day job. It was pretty tough to begin with, coming from a commerical company who specialised in brand- ing with a ‘new brand, different typeface this time’ approach. Now, however, I sometimes struggle to use different typefaces when faces like Gill Sans Qand Helvetica answer the design problems so elegantly. 18 Fall Sources Archer, Ben. “Eric Gill Got It Wrong; A Re-evaluation of Gill Sans.” Typotheque., Jan. 2007. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

Boulton, Mark. “Typeface of the Month: Gill Sans.”, 16 Dec. 2005. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

Challand, Skylar. “Know Your Type: Gill Sans.” IDSGN. N.p., 1 Oct. 2009. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

“Font Designer – Eric Gill.” Linotype.,Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

“Gill Sans.” Typedia., 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

Sutphen, Kate. “Gill Sans History.”, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

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