Gill Sans
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| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Humanist |
| Designer(s) | Eric Gill |
| Foundry | Monotype |
| Date created | 1926 |
| Date released | 1928 (Monotype) |
| Design based on | Johnston |
| Variations | Gill Kayo |
Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
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. Gill as a young artist had assisted Johnston in its early development stages. In 1926, Douglas Cleverdon, a young printer and later a BBC executive, opened a bookshop in Bristol, and Gill painted a fascia for the shop in sans-serif capitals. In addition, Gill sketched an alphabet for Cleverdon as a guide for him to use for notices and announcements. By this time Gill had become a prominent stonemason, artist and creator of lettering in his own right and had begun to work on creating typeface designs.
Gill was commissioned to develop his design into a full metal type family by Stanley Morison, an influential Monotype executive and historian of printing. Morison hoped that it could be a competitor to a wave of German sans-serif fonts in a new "geometric" style, which included Erbar, Futura and Kabel families, which were being launched to considerable attention in Germany during the latter 1920s. Gill Sans was released in 1928 by Monotype, initially as a set of titling capitals that was quickly followed by a lower-case. Gill's aim was to blend the influences of Johnston, classic serif typefaces and Roman inscriptions to create a design that looked both cleanly modern and classical at the same time.
Marketed by Monotype as a design of "classic simplicity and real beauty", it was intended as a display typeface that could be used for posters and advertisements, as well as for the text of documents that need to be clearly legible at small sizes or from a distance, such as book blurbs, timetables and price lists. Designed before setting documents entirely in sans-serif text was common, its standard weight is noticeably bolder than most modern body text fonts.
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