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an introductry booklet about
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gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans gill sans the British typeface
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Gill Sans is a typeface designed by Eric Gill, a sculptor, printmaker and typeface designer from Brighton, England. Gill initially left home to London in pursue to be an architect, however he became frustrated with his course and started taking classes in stonemasonry and calligraphy. He eventually bow out of his architectural practice and started his creative career by becoming a calligrapher, letter-cutter, and monument mason. He started out working as a stone carving artist, working on building sculptures, monuments, and statues. Gill’s early skilful practice helped set up his path to sign paint and eventually be a typeface designer later on, his passion for stone carving and roman inscriptions can be seen echoed in his typeface designs.
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One of the specific lettering project that Gill worked on was designing an alphabet for the W.H.Smith’s sign painters. Gill also hand painted a sans-serif capitals signage for the front of a bookshop in Bristol during 1926, the owner of the store was Douglas Cleverdon, which later became a BBC executive. He also sketched the set of alphabet used for Cleverdon as a guide for future uses.
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Gill’s first involvement in the development of a typeface was his work with Edward Johnston on the corporate font for London Underground in 1916. It was in his younger days that he assisted and worked closely with Johnston in the early development stage of the typeface. That experience was crucial to Eric Gill’s career as Gill Sans was created in the impact of Johnston typeface and it was part of the objective to mix his admiration of both the Johnston typeface and roman inscriptions together when designing Gill Sans.
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With the influence of Roman inscriptions, the upper case of the standard Gill Sans was borrowed from monumental Roman capitals while the lower case from traditional old style serif letters. The “a” and “g” are designed in the roman style of “double-storey” form rather than the usual “single-storey” used in handwriting and other geometric sans-serifs typefaces. However, the form of the “O” is almost like a perfect circle, the “M” designed in the form of a square and its middle point meets in the centre, which was similarly done in Johnston.
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a The shapes of each letter in Gill Sans has been known for it’s distinctive deviation in each weight and style, this can be seen in the “a” when it becomes a “single-storey” in the italic style, and “p” with a calligraphic tail in the italic style.
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Gill Sans has a multiple set of weight variation up to 36 styles when it was first released as a metal type, and they aren’t mechanically produced from one single weight design therefore each weight tend to carry it’s own distinct character. The common Gill Sans weight used today are light, regular, bold, extra bold, ultra bold, condensed, bold extra condensed, and their respective italic versions.
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Therefore although in the same size, the letter “a” shows a different letter shape across all weights, especially in the Ultra Bold style. In the light weights, the slanting cut at the top left of the regular “t” is replaced with two separate strokes. The letters “i” and “j” have a smaller dot than its parent letter’s stroke in the weights heavier than bold. These special and distinct structures in each style and weight provides users a wider range of character and tonality to be used in specific applications, all within a same type family.
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Gill Sans was first created in a single uppercase weight in 1928 for large size applications like headings, and became well known when it was introduced as the official typeface for The London and North Eastern Railway system on hand painted signages, timetables, menu and posters. It was also used for British Railways in the 1948. The typeface was then developed into full set and marketed by Monotype as a “classic simplicity and real beauty” typeface, and was intended to be used as a display typeface for large size prints such as advertisements. The typeface was also suited for high readability body copy in text documents or designs that needed to be legible in a smaller font size, allowing the eyes to read the contents easily.
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The London and North Eastern Railway System. Headings. BBC. United Colours of Benetton. Logos. British Railways. Publications. Sub-headings. Print. Signages. Penguin Books. Body text. Movies. Advertisement. Posters. Menu. Packaging. Timetables. Wordmark. Articles. Covers. Magazines. etc.
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Heading 50pt Subheading 30pt Body text 11pt Caption 8.5pt regular
Heading 50pt Subheading 30pt Body text 11pt Caption 8.5pt semi bold
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Ultrabold 8pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Bold italic 10pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Bold 12pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Semibold Italic 14pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Semibold 16pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Italic 18pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Regular 20pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Light Italic 22pt
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Light 24pt
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Gill Sans is one of the dominant typefaces in British typeface design history and has been extremely popular during its times, it has also been described as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the English Helveticaâ&#x20AC;?. The lasting popularity of Gill Sans in British design has landed the typeface in the typeface genre of san-serif humanist style.
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Since itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s appearance in the 1928, Gill Sans remained popular until when the trend of highly geometrical typefaces surfaced around the 1950s and 60s. Typefaces that were new at that period like Helvetica and Univers became popular and they were considered the early stage of grotesque sans-serifs. As the love for grotesque design continues to grow, both the two typefaces were widely used and have taken over some iconic platform Gill Sans were known for. For example, the Helvetica and Univers were used to rebrand the British Rail in 1965 and were used in printed materials, alongside Rail Alphabet for signage. The rebranding has then moved on from the classic all caps signage style which Gill Sans was seen used for.
I n 2 0 07, J a m e s M o s l e y, historian in printing and letter design mentioned “its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the ... pret tiness of Gill S ans”. The introduction of phototypesetting, a technique that allows typefaces to be printed from photographs on film, has also reduced the dominance of Gill Sans as an increasing number of typefaces were able to be used in a lower cost. It was mentioned that no matter the excellent quality they were, it is still possible to be bored of the “bland good taste” of Gill Sans. To d a y, G i l l S a n s t y p e f a c e s are available digitally and are easily reached as included in most Mac OS and Windows Office. The typeface is still widely used today but hopefully not overused.
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TUVWXYZ Combination of lowercase semibold and uppercase light
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