by
A GEOMETRIC
TYPEFACE
WITH PERSONALITY
Gill Sans is among one of the unique typefaces in typography. If a font from 15th century Rome and 20th century London had sex, their lovechild would be Gill Sans looking more like British. Gill Sans is a great combination of both serif and san serif fonts characteristics.
A further exploration into its history, characteristics, pros and cons and personal opinions will allow me the further understanding of this typeface and its uses in our society even in nowadays.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Light Italic
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Medium Italic
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Book Italic
Gill Sans is the product of an artist turned to typographer Eric Gill. The font was released through the British branch of Monotype Corporation in 1928, initially as a set of titling capitals that was quickly followed by a lower-case.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Light
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Medium
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Book
/Type Family Identity
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Bold Italic
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Bold Condensed
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Ultra Bold
Gill was commissioned by Stanley Morison to develop a design that it could be a competitor to a wave of German sans-serif fonts in a new “geometric” style, such as Futura, Erban and Kabel families.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Bold
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Condensed
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 &!?’’‘’"$€§*#%\(){} /Heavy
/Type Family Identity
The most spectacular of these display types is the ultra-bold version also known as Gill Kayo. of which there is also an interesting condensed variety.
Gill was mildly amused by Monotype quest for extremity and is reported to have dubbed Kayo “Gill Sans Double Elefans.” Among the other display versions developed during Gill’s lifetime is a series of shadowed capitals.
LIGHT ¢
Gage QUICK
/Display Variants
6 pt medium
7 pt medium
8 pt medium
9 pt medium
10 pt medium
11 pt medium
12 pt medium
14 pt medium
18 pt medium
21 pt medium
24 pt medium
36 pt medium
48 pt medium
60 pt medium
72 pt medium
72 pt bold 60 pt bold 48 pt bold 36 pt bold 24 pt bold 21 pt bold 18 pt bold 14 pt bold 12 pt bold 11 pt bold 10 pt bold 9 pt bold 8 pt bold
7 pt bold
6 pt bold
/Size
THE THE WORW
BREA BRE NEN
THE
HEL VETICA OF ENGLAND
GILL SANS
/HEADLINE / CAPITALS
/size14 pt /leding16 pt Gill Sans is feature in much of the British Culture. An immediate success, the year after its release the London and North Eastern Railway chose it for all its posters, timetables and publicity material, a use later extended across all British railways. Gill Sans was one of the dominant typefaces in British printing in the years following its release, and remains extremely popular: it has been described as "the English Helvetica" because of its lasting popularity in British.
/size 9 pt /leading 10 pt
Gill Sans is feature in much of the British Culture. An immediate success, the year after its release the London and North Eastern Railway chose it for all its posters, timetables and publicity material, a use later extended across all British railways. Gill Sans was one of the dominant typefaces in British printing in the years following its release, and remains extremely popular: it has been described as "the English Helvetica" because of its lasting popularity in British design. Gill Sans has influenced many other typefaces, and helped to define a genre of Sans-Serif, known as the humanist style. It also soon became used on the modernist, deliberately simple covers of Penguin books, and was sold up to very large sizes which were often used in British posters and notices of the period.
/size12 pt /leading14 pt Gill Sans is feature in much of the British Culture.An immediate success, the year after its release the London and North Eastern Railway chose it for all its posters, timetables and publicity material, a use later extended across all British railways. Gill Sans was one of the dominant typefaces in British printing in the years following its release, and remains extremely popular: it has been described as "the English Helvetica" because of its lasting popularity in British design. Gill Sans has influenced many other typefaces, and helped to define a genre of Sans-Serif, known as the humanist style. It also soon became used on the modernist, deliberately simple covers of Penguin books, and was sold up to very large sizes which were often used in British posters and notices of the period.
/Text
Characteristics of Gill Sans are unique to the artist himself. Containing hard sculpted forms, this is also a likely representation of Gill carrying his artistic sculpting knowledge and applying that basis to the creation of this typeface.
/Outline Version
CG RR R QQ Terminal
Garamond
Gill Sans
Gill Sans
Garamond
Myriad
Gill Sans features the vertical terminals on letters “C”, “G”, “c”, “e”, “s” and “g”. Τhese details give the face of a scribed look, as if the type were written with a broad-nibben pen.
Classic Roman letters were designed for maximum decorative effect, which led to long legs on uppercase “R”, a feature you find in Gill Sans. Contemporary letters are concerned with fitting letters into economical space and they restrict the length of the leg.
Gill Sans has a long decorative tail in the style of classic Roman letters. For instance, note the letter “Q” in Gill Sans and “Q” in Garamond. Note the tip of the swash that looks again like it was written with a broad-nibben pen.
aaa bb b ggg Arm
Bowl
Bembo
Stem
Bembo
Bembo
Myriad
Gill Sans
Bowl
Gill Sans
Gill Sans
The “a” in Gill Sans features a small bowl and large arm, giving it the top heavy feel of early Roman miniscule letters. Contemporary two storey a’s, like the one in Myriad, feel more grounded with their large bowls and shorter tail.
In contemporary letters, the bowl typically curves up where it meets the stem, leaving a cleft at the terminus, In Gill, the stem ends at the bowl in letters “b”, “d”, “p” and “q”.
Myriad
Whereas contemporary typefaces like Myriad have a two-story “g”, the three storey construction of the “g” in Gill Sans mimics classic Roman type. Note the “g” also has a vertical terminal.
Myriad
/Key Details
kxhp yj zes t
[1]
i
j f uv o garstlzx bhd
[g]
o w e klv b xy r zqms
[2]
os iekz gx vy
i v ex r s m
ehf a tq ika r xm w ts [4]
r gspe k h am y /CHARA CTERISTICS
xk u ieztroavw tau xew i v s j
f q yauvr jz p iwemxvsg t
t o x g k sc er vdz fau p
b
g sui e
f
e j k t fb us zm carp vy g p l bs t zv rjg xm y
[3]
[1]
[2]
f yl e p and large /The “a” in Gill Sans features a small bowl krofivearly arm, giving it the top-heavy feel o mx Roman miniscule letters. w
/The signature elongated the “g” resembling eyeglasses are exemplary of the Futuristic movement in which Gill was a part of.
[3]
[4]
/The "t" with its curve to bottom right and slanting cut at top left, unlike Futura's which is simply formed from two straight lines. /The Italic “p” actually overlaps each other where the counter and stem meet.
a
p j
y
j fs iy btok gm kzvawue i
f h s ey t or x av zw yamk f g prd ov w sx
i s x gey rot
ozr s xktd a mew
j t h zd ge wy u k v z omxrs
q j pglb xi s acxvr z
krg vsq mx
g eq az t p shj k wx omu v cb f
ei hu g v fpty r c maqxsz
/ sk rxut zg p yr o m wcavsef
/ / /Colour
/Positive
/Negative
/Positive
/Negative
The upper-case of Gill Sans is partly modelled on Roman capitals like those found on the Column of Trajan.
While it is not based on purely geometric principles to the extent of the geometric Sans-Serifs that had preceded it, some of its aspects do nonetheless have a geometric feel.
/UPPER / lowercase
[k,t]
[r,e]
[y,7]
/LetterNumber / LetterLetter
Gill Sans takes inspiration from the calligrapher and lettering artist Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground, now (although not at the time) most often simply called the "Johnston" typeface.
/Underground
Drawing heavily on Johnston’s work, Gill first experimented with his ‘improvements’ in 1926 when he hand-painted lettering for a book shop sign in his hometown, Bristol.
/Sketches
Gill also sketched a guide for the bookshop owner, Douglas Cleverdon, who later published the work in A Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon 1987.
/Sketches
January, 2017.
Written and designed by Antreas Morphis
“The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.� -Eric Gill