120-459: Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston 's 1916 "Underground Alphabet" , the corporate font of London Underground . As a young artist, Gill had assisted Johnston in its early development stages. In 1926, Douglas Cleverdon , a young printer-publisher, opened
240-611: A Scottish schoolmistress, in 1900, and they were married in 1903. They had three daughters. They lived in London until moving, in 1912, to Ditchling , Sussex, where Eric Gill had settled in 1907. His wife died in 1936. He was appointed a CBE in 1939. He died at home in Ditchling, and is buried in St Margaret's churchyard. A memorial to Johnston was unveiled in 2019 at Farringdon Station . Designed by Fraser Muggeridge , it
360-473: A bookshop in Bristol , and Gill painted a fascia for the shop for him in sans-serif capitals. In addition, Gill sketched an alphabet for Cleverdon as a guide for him to use for future 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 alphabet into
480-509: A casting machine to cast type. It was Monotype's standard practice at the time to first engrave a limited number of characters and print proofs (some of which survive) from them to test overall balance of colour and spacing on the page, before completing the remaining characters. Walter Tracy , Rhatigan and Gill's biographer Malcolm Yorke have all written that the drawing office's work in making Gill Sans successful has not been fully appreciated; Yorke described Gill as "tactless" in his claims that
600-489: A class at the Royal College of Art and many students were inspired by his teachings. He published a handbook, Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering in 1906. He started a second book in the 1920s but it was unfinished at his death. In 1913, Frank Pick commissioned him to design a typeface for London Underground, and the simple and clear sans-serif Johnston typeface was the result. In 1913, Johnston
720-417: A device for emphasis , due to their typically blacker type color . For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into three or four major groups, the fourth being the result of splitting the grotesque category into grotesque and neo-grotesque. This group features most of the early (19th century to early 20th) sans-serif designs. Influenced by Didone serif typefaces of
840-484: A friend: In Johnston I have lost confidence. Despite all he did for us...he has undone too much by forsaking his standard of the Roman alphabet, giving the world, without safeguard or explanation, his block letters which disfigure our modern life. His prestige has obscured their vulgarity and commercialism. Johnston also created a blackletter -influenced design for a 1929 German edition of Hamlet . He met Greta Grieg,
960-478: A full metal type family by his friend Stanley Morison , an influential Monotype executive and historian of printing. Morison hoped that it could be Monotype's competitor to a wave of German sans-serif families in a new " geometric " style, which included Erbar , Futura and Kabel , all being launched to considerable attention in Germany during the late 1920s. Gill Sans was released in 1928 by Monotype, initially as
1080-441: A geometric feel. The J descends below the baseline. The "O" is an almost perfect circle and the capital "M" is based on the proportions of a square with the middle strokes meeting at the centre; this was not inspired by Roman carving but is very similar to Johnston. The 'E' and 'F' are also relatively narrow. The influence of traditional serif letters is also clear in the "two-storey" lower-case "a" and "g", unlike that of Futura, and
1200-456: A great range of alternative designs and releases. A book weight was created in 1993 in between the light and regular weight, suitable for body text, along with a heavy weight. In 1936, Gill and Monotype released an extremely bold sans-serif named Gill Kayo (from KO, or knockout , implying its aggressive build). This has often been branded as Gill Sans Ultra Bold, though in practice many letters vary considerably from Gill Sans. Gill, who thought of
1320-507: A key element of the 'Modernist classical' style from the 1930s to the 1950s, that promoted clean, spare design, often with all-capitals and centred setting of headings. Gill Sans remains popular, although a trend away from it towards grotesque and neo-grotesque typefaces took place around the 1950s and 1960s under the influence of continental and American design. Typefaces that became popular around this time included original early "grotesque" sans-serifs, as well as new and more elegant designs in
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#17327727412271440-586: A large family of styles, which it continues to sell. A basic set is included with some Microsoft software and macOS . The proportions of Gill Sans stem from monumental Roman capitals in the upper case, and traditional "old-style" serif letters in the lower. This gives Gill Sans a very different style of design to geometric sans-serifs like Futura , based on simple squares and circles, or grotesque or "industrial" designs like Akzidenz-Grotesk , Helvetica and Univers influenced by nineteenth-century lettering styles. For example, compared to grotesque sans-serifs
1560-643: A lower-case 'L' with a curl or 'i' with serif under the dot. A particular subgenre of sans-serifs is those such as Rothbury, Britannic , Radiant , and National Trust with obvious variation in stroke width. These have been called 'modulated', 'stressed' or 'high-contrast' sans-serifs. They are nowadays often placed within the humanist genre, although they predate Johnston which started the modern humanist genre. These may take inspiration from sources outside printing such as brush lettering or calligraphy. Letters without serifs have been common in writing across history, for example in casual, non-monumental epigraphy of
1680-522: A more unified range of styles than on previous designs, allowing a wider range of text to be set artistically through setting headings and body text in a single family. The style of design using asymmetric layouts, Helvetica and a grid layout extensively has been called the Swiss or International Typographic Style . This gallery presents images of sans-serif lettering and type across different times and places from early to recent. Particular attention
1800-575: A result, printing done in the Latin alphabet for the first three hundred and fifty years of printing was "serif" in style, whether in blackletter , roman type , italic or occasionally script . The earliest printing typefaces which omitted serifs were not intended to render contemporary texts, but to represent inscriptions in Ancient Greek and Etruscan . Thus, Thomas Dempster 's De Etruria regali libri VII (1723), used special types intended for
1920-569: A rounded "y", seriffed "1" and lower-case "L" with a turn at the bottom. Infant designs of fonts are often used in education and toys as the letters are thought to be more recognisable to children being based on handwriting, and are often produced to supplement popular families such as Gill Sans, Akzidenz-Grotesk and Bembo . Monotype also created a version with rounded stroke ends for John Lewis for use on toys. The digital releases of Gill Sans fall into several main phases: releases before 2005 (which includes most bundled "system" versions of Gill Sans),
2040-425: 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. Designed before setting documents entirely in sans-serif text was common, its standard weight is noticeably bolder than most modern body text fonts. An immediate success,
2160-619: A signboard in the style of Gill Sans, which survives in the collection of the St Bride Library . In 1949 the Railway Executive decided on standard types of signs to be used at all stations. Lettering was to use the Gill Sans typeface on a background of the regional colour. Gill Sans was also used in much of its printed output, very often in capitals-only settings for signage. Specially drawn variations were developed by
2280-489: A similar effect for smaller projects; their sans-serif Compacta and Stephenson Blake 's Impact exemplified the design trends of the period by choosing dense, industrial designs. Of the period from the 1930s to 1950s, when he was growing up, James Mosley would later write: The Monotype classics dominated the typographical landscape ... in Britain, at any rate, they were so ubiquitous that, while their excellent quality
2400-775: A spurred "G" and an "R" with a curled leg. Capitals tend to be of relatively uniform width. Cap height and ascender height are generally the same to produce a more regular effect in texts such as titles with many capital letters, and descenders are often short for tighter line spacing. They often avoid having a true italic in favor of a more restrained oblique or sloped design, although at least some sans-serif true italics were offered. Examples of grotesque typefaces include Akzidenz-Grotesk , Venus , News Gothic , Franklin Gothic , IBM Plex and Monotype Grotesque . Akzidenz Grotesk Old Face, Knockout, Grotesque No. 9 and Monotype Grotesque are examples of digital fonts that retain more of
2520-399: A standard "double-storey" "g". In the regular or roman style of Gill Sans, some letters were simplified from Johnston, with diamond dots becoming round (rectangles in the later light weight) and the lower-case "L" becoming a simple line, but the "a" became more complex with a curving tail in most versions and sizes. In addition, the design was simply refined in general, for example by making
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#17327727412272640-439: A standard for inscriptional lettering in Britain at the time : Gill's teacher Edward Johnston had written that, "The Roman capitals have held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions." While Gill Sans is not based on purely geometric principles to the extent of the geometric sans-serifs that had preceded it, some aspects of Gill Sans do have
2760-417: A strong impact internationally: Helvetica came to be the most used typeface for the following decades. Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circles and squares. Common features are a nearly-circular capital 'O', sharp and pointed uppercase 'N' vertices, and a "single-storey" lowercase letter 'a'. The 'M' is often splayed and the capitals of varying width, following
2880-409: A study of Schelter & Giesecke specimens; Mosley describes this as "thoroughly discredited"; even in 1986 Walter Tracy described the claimed dates as "on stylistic grounds ... about forty years too early". Sans-serif lettering and typefaces were popular due to their clarity and legibility at distance in advertising and display use, when printed very large or small. Because sans-serif type
3000-584: A tail that looped upwards (similar to that on Century among others, and used by the LNER), oblique designs as opposed to the standard true italic, a more curving, true-italic "e" and several alternative numerals. In particular, in the standard designs for Gill Sans the numeral "1", upper-case "i" and lower-case "L" are all a simple vertical line, so an alternative "1" with a serif was sold for number-heavy situations where this could otherwise cause confusion, such as on price-lists. (Not all timetables used it: for example,
3120-556: A typeface expressly designed to be suitable for both display and body text. Some humanist designs may be more geometric, as in Gill Sans and Johnston (especially their capitals), which like Roman capitals are often based on perfect squares, half-squares and circles, with considerable variation in width. These somewhat architectural designs may feel too stiff for body text. Others such as Syntax , Goudy Sans and Sassoon Sans more resemble handwriting, serif typefaces or calligraphy. Frutiger , from 1976, has been particularly influential in
3240-461: A very wide range of sizes and weights. Despite the popularity of Gill Sans, some reviews have been critical. Robert Harling , who knew Gill, wrote in his 1976 anthology examining Gill's lettering that the density of the basic weight made it unsuitable for extended passages of text, printing a passage in it as a demonstration. The regular weight has been used to print body text for some trade printing uses such as guides to countryside walks published by
3360-404: A wide range of styles such as condensed and shadowed weights. Several shadowed designs were released, including a capitals-only regular shadowed design and a light-shadowed version with deep relief shadows. In the metal type era, a 'cameo ruled' design that placed white letters in boxes or against a stippled black background was available. The shadowed weights were intended to be used together with
3480-416: Is bundled with Windows 10 in the user-downloadable "Pan-European Supplemental Fonts" package. Peter Wiegel digitized a modified variant of Gill Sans Bold Condensed that used on road signs in former East Germany until 1990 named TGL 12096-1 typeface. First unveiled in a single uppercase weight in 1928, Gill Sans achieved national prominence almost immediately, when it was chosen the following year to become
3600-562: Is called Egyptian Characters ". Around 1816, the Ordnance Survey began to use 'Egyptian' lettering, monoline sans-serif capitals, to mark ancient Roman sites. This lettering was printed from copper plate engraving. Around 1816, William Caslon IV produced the first sans-serif printing type in England for the Latin alphabet, a capitals-only face under the title 'Two Lines English Egyptian' , where 'Two Lines English' referred to
3720-662: Is called an oblique style. This is clearest in the "a", which becomes a "single storey" design similar to handwriting, and the lower-case "p", which has a calligraphic tail on the left reminiscent of italics such as those cut by William Caslon in the eighteenth century. The italic "e" is more restrained, with a straight line on the underside of the bowl where serif fonts normally add a curve. Like most serif fonts, several weights and releases of Gill Sans use ligatures to allow its expansive letter "f" to join up with or avoid colliding with following letters. The basic letter shapes of Gill Sans do not look consistent across styles (or even in
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3840-412: Is given to unusual uses and more obscure typefaces, meaning this gallery should not be considered a representative sampling. Edward Johnston Edward Johnston , CBE (11 February 1872 – 26 November 1944) was a British craftsman who is regarded, with Rudolf Koch , as the father of modern calligraphy , in the particular form of the broad-edged pen as a writing tool. He is best known as
3960-584: Is not a conventional feature on grotesque and neo-grotesque designs. Due to the diversity of sans-serif typefaces, many do not exactly fit into the above categories. For example, Neuzeit S has both neo-grotesque and geometric influences, as does Hermann Zapf 's URW Grotesk . Whitney blends humanist and grotesque influences, while Klavika is a geometric design not based on the circle. Sans-serif typefaces intended for signage, such as Transport and Tern (both used on road signs), may have unusual features to enhance legibility and differentiate characters, such as
4080-448: Is that sans-serifs are based on either " fat face typefaces " or slab-serifs with the serifs removed. It is now known that the inspiration was more classical antiquity, and sans-serifs appeared before the first dated appearance of slab-serif letterforms in 1810. The Schelter & Giesecke foundry also claimed during the 1920s to have been offering a sans-serif with lower-case by 1825. Wolfgang Homola dated it in 2004 to 1882 based on
4200-730: The Central School of Arts and Crafts . Lethaby advised him to study manuscripts at the British Museum , which encouraged Johnston to make his letters using a broad edged pen. Lethaby also engaged Johnston to teach lettering, and he started teaching at the Central School in Southampton Row , London, in September 1899, where he influenced the typeface designer and sculptor Eric Gill . From 1901 he also taught
4320-459: The classical model . The geometric sans originated in Germany in the 1920s. Two early efforts in designing geometric types were made by Herbert Bayer and Jakob Erbar , who worked respectively on Universal Typeface (unreleased at the time but revived digitally as Architype Bayer ) and Erbar ( c. 1925 ). In 1927 Futura , by Paul Renner , was released to great acclaim and popularity. Geometric sans-serif typefaces were popular from
4440-516: The "C" and "a" have a much less "folded up" structure, with wider apertures . The "a" and "g" in the roman or regular style are "double-storey" designs, rather than the "single-storey" forms used in handwriting and blackletter often found in grotesque and especially geometric sans-serifs. The upper-case of Gill Sans is partly modelled on Roman capitals like those found on Trajan's Column in Rome, with considerable variation in width. These had become
4560-505: The "astonishing" effect the unusual style had on the public. The lettering style apparently became referred to as "old Roman" or "Egyptian" characters, referencing the classical past and a contemporary interest in Ancient Egypt and its blocky, geometric architecture. Mosley writes that "in 1805 Egyptian letters were happening in the streets of London, being plastered over shops and on walls by signwriters, and they were astonishing
4680-415: 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 lower-case "a" also narrows strikingly towards the top of its loop, a common feature of serif designs but rarer in sans-serifs. Following the traditional serif model the italic has different letterforms from the roman, where many sans-serifs simply slant the letters in what
4800-758: The 'b', 'd', 'p', and 'q' of Gill Sans". The titling capitals of Gill Sans were first unveiled at a printing conference in 1928; it was also shown in a specimen issued in the Fleuron magazine edited by Morison. While initial response was partly appreciative, it was still considered dubious by some ultra-conservative printers who saw all sans-serif type as modern and unsound; one called it "typographical Bolshevism ". Sans-serifs were still regarded as vulgar and commercial by purists in this period: Johnston's pupil Graily Hewitt privately commented of them that: In Johnston I have lost confidence. Despite all he did for us ... he has undone too much by forsaking his standard of
4920-777: The (generally wider) slab serif and "fat faces" of the period. It also added a lower-case. The term "grotesque" comes from the Italian word for cave , and was often used to describe Roman decorative styles found by excavation, but had long become applied in the modern sense for objects that appeared "malformed or monstrous". The term "grotesque" became commonly used to describe sans-serifs. Similar condensed sans-serif display typefaces, often capitals-only, became very successful. Sans-serif printing types began to appear thereafter in France and Germany. A few theories about early sans-serifs now known to be incorrect may be mentioned here. One
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5040-433: The 1860s. The family returned to England in 1875. With his father seeking work, and his mother ill, Johnston was raised by an aunt. He was educated at home, and enjoyed mathematics, technology, and creating illuminated manuscripts. His mother died in 1891, and he began to work for an uncle. He spent some time studying medicine at Edinburgh University but did not complete the course. After his mother's death, his father
5160-430: The 1920s and 1930s due to their clean, modern design, and many new geometric designs and revivals have been developed since. Notable geometric types of the period include Kabel , Semplicità , Bernhard Gothic , Nobel and Metro ; more recent designs in the style include ITC Avant Garde , Brandon Grotesque , Gotham , Avenir , Product Sans , HarmonyOS Sans and Century Gothic . Many geometric sans-serif alphabets of
5280-449: The 2005 Pro edition, and the 2015 Nova release which adds many alternative characters and is in part included with Windows 10 . In general characteristics for common weights the designs are similar, but there are some changes: for example, in the book weight the 2005 release used circular ij dots but the 2015 release uses square designs, and the 2015 release simplifies some ligatures. Digital Gill Sans also gained character sets not present in
5400-457: The Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis." Similarly, the painter Joseph Farington wrote in his diary on 13 September 1805 of seeing a memorial engraved "in what
5520-477: The Futura, Erbar and Kabel tradition include Bank Gothic , DIN 1451 , Eurostile and Handel Gothic , along with many of the typefaces designed by Ray Larabie . Humanist sans-serif typefaces take inspiration from traditional letterforms, such as Roman square capitals , traditional serif typefaces and calligraphy. Many have true italics rather than an oblique , ligatures and even swashes in italic. One of
5640-413: The L.N.E.R. used the simple version.) Some early versions of Gill Sans also had features later abandoned, such as an unusual "7" matching the curve of the "9", a "5" pushing forwards, and a lower-case letter-height "0". Gill was involved in the design of these alternatives, and Monotype's archive preserves notes that he rethought the geometric alternatives. With the increasing popularity of Futura Gill Sans
5760-601: The LNER. William Addison Dwiggins described it and Futura as "fine in the capitals and bum in the lower-case" while proposing to create a more individualistic competitor, Metro , for Linotype around 1929. Modern writers, including Stephen Coles and Ben Archer, have criticised it for failing to improve on Johnston and for unevenness of colour, especially in the bolder weights (discussed below). More generally, modern font designer Jonathan Hoefler has criticised Johnston and Gill's designs for rigidity, calling their work "products more of
5880-698: The Railway Executive (part of the British Transport Commission ) for signs in its manual for the use of signpainters painting large signs by hand. Other users included Penguin Books ' iconic paperback jacket designs from 1935 and British official mapping agency Ordnance Survey . It was also used by London Transport for documents which could not be practically set in Johnston. Paul Shaw, a historian of printing, has described it as
6000-405: The Roman alphabet, giving the world, without safeguard or explanation, his block letters which disfigure our modern life. His prestige has obscured their vulgarity and commercialism. Nonetheless, Gill Sans rapidly became popular after its release. Gill Sans' technical production followed Monotype's standard method of the period. The characters were drawn mirrored on paper in large plan diagrams by
6120-531: The Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture), by Peter Behrens , in 1900. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sans-serif types were viewed with suspicion by many printers, especially those of fine book printing , as being fit only for advertisements (if that), and to this day most books remain printed in serif typefaces as body text. This impression would not have been helped by
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#17327727412276240-548: The United States in this period, however, was a custom wordmark and logo made by Gill for Poetry magazine in 1930 based on Gill Sans. Its editor Harriet Monroe had seen Gill's work in London. The BBC adopted the typeface as its corporate typeface in 1997 for many but not all purposes, including on its logo . Explaining the change, designer Martin Lambie-Nairn said that "by choosing a typeface that has stood
6360-549: The classical period. However, Roman square capitals , the inspiration for much Latin-alphabet lettering throughout history, had prominent serifs. While simple sans-serif letters have always been common in "uncultured" writing and sometimes even in epigraphy, such as basic handwriting, most artistically-authored letters in the Latin alphabet, both sculpted and printed, since the Middle Ages have been inspired by fine calligraphy, blackletter writing and Roman square capitals . As
6480-613: The condensed forms of the contemporary sans cuttings of the last thirty years." Leading type designer Adrian Frutiger wrote in 1961 on designing a new face, Univers , on the nineteenth-century model: "Some of these old sans-serifs have had a real renaissance within the last twenty years, once the reaction of the 'New Objectivity' had been overcome. A purely geometrical form of type is unsustainable." Of this period in Britain, Mosley has commented that in 1960 "orders unexpectedly revived" for Monotype's eccentric Monotype Grotesque design: "[it] represents, even more evocatively than Univers,
6600-425: The custom but very similar Rail Alphabet for signage, and abandoned the classical, all caps signage style with which Gill Sans is often associated. Kinneir and Calvert's road signage redesign used a similar approach. Linotype and its designer Hermann Zapf , who had begun development on a planned Gill Sans competitor in 1955, first considered redrawing some letters to make it more like these faces before abandoning
6720-541: The design as something of a joke, proposed naming it "Double Elefans". Harling reviewed it as "dismal" and sarcastically commented that "typographical historians of 2000AD (which isn't, after all, so very far away) will find this odd outburst in Mr Gill's career, and will spend much time in attempting to track down this sad psychological state of his during 1936." Forty years later he described it as "the most horrendous and blackguardly of these display exploitations". The design
6840-565: The design of the Underground system, one of the first and most lasting uses of a standard lettering style as corporate branding (Gill had designed a set of serif letters for WH Smith ), writing that it "conferred upon [the lettering] a sanction, civic and commercial, as had not been accorded to an alphabet since the time of Charlemagne". Morison and Gill had met with some resistance within Monotype while developing Perpetua and while Morison
6960-406: The design process were the "a" (several versions and sizes in the hot metal era had a straight tail like Johnston's or a mildly curving tail) and the "b", "d", "p" and "q", where some versions (and sizes, since the same weight would not be identical at every size) had stroke ends visible and others did not. Rhatigan has commented that Monotype's archives contain "enough [material] for a book just about
7080-417: The design project (now named "Magnus") around 1962–3. An additional development which reduced Gill Sans' dominance was the arrival of phototypesetting, which allowed typefaces to be printed from photographs on film and (especially in display use – hot metal continued for some body text setting for longer) massively increased the range of typefaces that could cheaply be used. Dry transfers like Letraset had
7200-420: The design was "as much as possible mathematically measurable ... as little reliance as possible should be placed on the sensibility of the draughtsmen and others concerned in its machine facture". Gill Sans rapidly became very popular. Its success was aided by Monotype's sophisticated marketing, led by Gill's supporter Beatrice Warde , and due to its practicality and availability for machine composition in
7320-481: The design was "cruder but much larger" than its predecessor, making it a success. Thereafter sans-serif capitals rapidly began to be issued from London typefounders. Much imitated was the Thorowgood "grotesque" face of the early 1830s. This was arrestingly bold and highly condensed, quite unlike the classical proportions of Caslon's design, but very suitable for poster typography and similar in aesthetic effect to
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#17327727412277440-785: The designer of Johnston , a sans-serif typeface that was used throughout the London Underground system until the 1980s. He also redesigned the famous roundel symbol used throughout the system. Johnston was born in San José de Mayo , Uruguay. His father, Fowell Buxton Johnston (born 1839), was an officer in the 3rd Dragoon Guards , and the younger son of Scottish MP Andrew Johnston and his second wife, abolitionist Priscilla Buxton , daughter of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet . Johnston's uncle (his father's elder brother), also Andrew Johnston , became an MP in Essex in
7560-618: The development of Gill Sans survives in Monotype's archives and in Gill's papers. While the capitals (which were prepared first) resemble Johnston quite closely, the archives document Gill (and the drawing office team at Monotype's works in Salfords Surrey , who developed a final precise design and spacing) grappling with the challenge of creating a viable humanist sans-serif lower-case as well as an italic, which Johnston's design did not have. Gill's first draft proposed many slanting cuts on
7680-920: The development of the modern humanist sans genre, especially designs intended to be particularly legible above all other design considerations. The category expanded greatly during the 1980s and 1990s, partly as a reaction against the overwhelming popularity of Helvetica and Univers and also due to the need for legible computer fonts on low-resolution computer displays. Designs from this period intended for print use include FF Meta , Myriad , Thesis , Charlotte Sans , Bliss , Skia and Scala Sans , while designs developed for computer use include Microsoft's Tahoma , Trebuchet , Verdana , Calibri and Corbel , as well as Lucida Grande , Fira Sans and Droid Sans . Humanist sans-serif designs can (if appropriately proportioned and spaced) be particularly suitable for use on screen or at distance, since their designs can be given wide apertures or separation between strokes, which
7800-603: The earliest humanist designs was Edward Johnston 's Johnston typeface from 1916, and, a decade later, Gill Sans ( Eric Gill , 1928). Edward Johnston, a calligrapher by profession, was inspired by classic letter forms, especially the capital letters on the Column of Trajan . Humanist designs vary more than gothic or geometric designs. Some humanist designs have stroke modulation (strokes that clearly vary in width along their line) or alternating thick and thin strokes. These include most popularly Hermann Zapf 's Optima (1958),
7920-462: The early twentieth century, an increase in popularity of sans-serif typefaces took place as more artistic sans-serif designs were released. While he disliked sans-serif typefaces in general, the American printer J. L. Frazier wrote of Copperplate Gothic in 1925 that "a certain dignity of effect accompanies ... due to the absence of anything in the way of frills", making it a popular choice for
8040-409: The eccentricities of some of the early sans-serif types. According to Monotype, the term "grotesque" originates from Italian : grottesco , meaning "belonging to the cave" due to their simple geometric appearance. The term arose because of adverse comparisons that were drawn with the more ornate Modern Serif and Roman typefaces that were the norm at the time. Neo-grotesque designs appeared in
8160-432: The end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism . For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque , § Neo-grotesque , § Geometric , § Humanist , and § Other or mixed . Sans-serif typefaces have become
8280-551: The end of the metal type period Gill Sans had been released in the following styles (not all sold at the same time): Titling series were capitals-only. Monotype offered Gill Sans on film in the phototypesetting period. The fonts released in 1961 included Light 362, Series 262, Bold 275, Extra Bold 321, Condensed 343, all of which were released in film matrix sets "A" (6–7 points) and "B" (8–22, 24 points). Monotype created an infant version of Gill Sans using single-storey "a" and "g", and other more distinguishable characters such as
8400-423: The ends of ascenders and descenders, looking less like Johnston than the released version did, and quite long descenders. Early art for the italic also looked very different, with less of a slope, again very long descenders and swash capitals . The final version did not use the calligraphic italic "g" Gill preferred in his serif designs Perpetua and Joanna (and considered in the draft italic art), instead using
8520-535: The experienced drawing office team, led and trained by Pierpont and Fritz Steltzer, both of whom Monotype had recruited from the German printing industry. The drawing staff who executed the design was disproportionately female; they worked out many aspects of the final drawings including adaptations of the letters to different sizes and the spacing. The diagrams were then used as a plan for machining metal punches by pantograph to stamp matrices , which would be loaded into
8640-405: The fresh revolutionary breeze that began to blow through typography in the early sixties" and "its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the ... prettiness of Gill Sans". By the 1960s, neo-grotesque typefaces such as Univers and Helvetica had become popular through reviving the nineteenth-century grotesques while offering
8760-621: The hooked 1 as default, while the regular weight is renamed 'Medium'. Monotype celebrated the release with a London exhibition on Gill's work, as they had in 1958 to mark the general release of Gill's serif design Joanna. One addition was italic swash caps, which had been considered by Gill but never released. The family includes 43 fonts, including 33 text fonts in 9 weights and 3 widths, 6 inline fonts in 5 weights and 2 widths (1 in condensed), 2 shadowed fonts in 2 weights and 1 width, 1 shadowed outline font, 1 deco font. Characters set support includes W1G. The basic set of Regular, Light and Bold weights
8880-480: The horizontals slightly narrower than verticals so that they do not appear unbalanced, a standard technique in font design which Johnston had not used. The "R" with its widely splayed leg is Gill's preferred design, unlike that of Johnston; historian James Mosley has suggested that this may be inspired by an Italian Renaissance carving in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Particular areas of thought during
9000-401: The hot metal era, with most preferring gothic designs like Franklin Gothic and geometric designs like Futura and Monotype's own Twentieth Century . Gill Sans therefore particularly achieved worldwide popularity after the close of the metal type era and in the phototypesetting and digital era, when it became a system font on Macintosh computers and Microsoft Office . One use of Gill's work in
9120-503: The initial success of Gill Sans, Monotype rapidly produced a wide variety of other variants. In addition, Monotype sold moulds ( matrices ) for Gill Sans in very large sizes for their "Supercaster" type-casting equipment. Popular with advertisers, this allowed end-users to cast their own type at a very competitive price. This made it a popular choice for posters. Gill's biographer Malcolm Yorke has described it as "the essence of clarity for public notices". Versions of Gill Sans were created in
9240-474: The last because each advertisement has to try and shout down its neighbours. Monotype developed a set of alternative characters for Gill Sans to cater for differing tastes and national printing styles of different countries. These include Futura-inspired designs of "N", "M", "R", "a", "g", "t" and others, a four-terminal "W" in the French renaissance style, a tighter "R", a "Q" in the nineteenth-century style with
9360-469: The later spacing: "the metal version ... was spaced, I suspect, as if it were a serif face". As of 2019, Monotype's current digitisation of Gill Sans is Gill Sans Nova, by George Ryan. Gill Sans Nova adds many additional variants, including some of the previously undigitised inline versions, stylistic alternates and an ultra-light weight which had been drawn for Grazia . The fonts differ from Gill Sans MT (MT stands for Monotype) in their adoption of
9480-537: The leading expert on early revival of sans-serif letters, has found that architect John Soane commonly used sans-serif letters on his drawings and architectural designs. Soane's inspiration was apparently the inscriptions dedicating the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy , with minimal serifs. These were then copied by other artists, and in London sans-serif capitals became popular for advertising, apparently because of
9600-507: The letters "J" and "Q" be allowed to elegantly descend below the baseline , something not normal for titling typefaces which were often made to fill up the entire area of the metal type. In the early days of its existence it was not always consistently simply called "Gill Sans", with other names such as "Gill Sans-serif", "Monotype Sans-Serif" (the latter two both used by Gill in some of his publications) or its order numbers (such as Series No. 231) sometimes used. A large amount of material about
9720-487: The machine than the hand, chilly and austere designs shaped by unbending rules, whose occasional moments of whimsy were so out of place as to feel volatile and disquieting". Gill broached the topic of the similarity with Johnston in a variety of ways in his work and writings, writing to Johnston in 1933 to apologise for the typeface bearing his name and describing Johnston's work as being important and seminal. However, in his Essay on Typography , he proposed that his version
9840-581: The metal type era all the sizes of the same style), especially in Extra Bold and Extra Condensed widths, while the Ultra Bold style is effectively a different design altogether and was originally marketed as such. Digital-period Monotype designer Dan Rhatigan, author of an article on Gill Sans's development after Gill's death, has commented: "Gill Sans grew organically ... [it] takes a very 'asystematic' approach to type. Very characteristic of when it
9960-633: The metal type, including text figures and small capitals . Like all metal type revivals, reviving Gill Sans in digital form raises several decisions of interpretation, such as the issue of how to compensate for the ink spread that would have been seen in print at small sizes more than larger. As a result, printed Gill Sans and its digital facsimile may not always match. The digital release of Gill Sans, like many Monotype digitisations, has been criticised, in particular for excessively tight letter-spacing and lack of optical sizes : with only one design released that has to be used at any text size, it cannot replicate
10080-491: The mid-twentieth century as an evolution of grotesque types. They are relatively straightforward in appearance with limited stroke width variation. Similar to grotesque typefaces, neo-grotesques often feature capitals of uniform width and a quite 'folded-up' design, in which strokes (for example on the 'c') are curved all the way round to end on a perfect horizontal or vertical. Helvetica is an example of this. Unlike earlier grotesque designs, many were issued in large families from
10200-479: The most prevalent for display of text on computer screens. On lower-resolution digital displays, fine details like serifs may disappear or appear too large. The term comes from the French word sans , meaning "without" and "serif" of uncertain origin, possibly from the Dutch word schreef meaning "line" or pen-stroke. In printed media, they are more commonly used for display use and less for body text . Before
10320-441: The nineteenth-century tendency to make sans-serif typefaces attention-grabbingly bold was self-defeating, since the result was compromised legibility. In the closing paragraph he ruefully noted his contribution to the genre: There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools. I myself am responsible for designing five different sorts of sans-serif letters – each one thicker and fatter than
10440-607: The period and sign painting traditions, these were often quite solid, bold designs suitable for headlines and advertisements. The early sans-serif typefaces often did not feature a lower case or italics , since they were not needed for such uses. They were sometimes released by width, with a range of widths from extended to normal to condensed, with each style different, meaning to modern eyes they can look quite irregular and eccentric. Grotesque typefaces have limited variation of stroke width (often none perceptible in capitals). The terminals of curves are usually horizontal, and many have
10560-613: The period, such as those authored by the Bauhaus art school (1919–1933) and modernist poster artists, were hand-lettered and not cut into metal type at the time. A separate inspiration for many types described "geometric" in design has been the simplified shapes of letters engraved or stenciled on metal and plastic in industrial use, which often follow a simplified structure and are sometimes known as "rectilinear" for their use of straight vertical and horizontal lines. Designs which have been called geometric in principles but not descended from
10680-501: The period. Gill Sans was one of the dominant typefaces in British printing in the years after its release and remains extremely popular. It has been described as "the British 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. Monotype rapidly expanded the original regular or medium weight into
10800-473: The public, who had never seen letters like them and were not sure they wanted to". A depiction of the style, as an engraving, rather than printed from type, was shown in the European Magazine of 1805, described as "old Roman" characters. However, the style did not become used in printing for some more years. (Early sans-serif signage was not printed from type but hand-painted or carved, since at
10920-434: The regular, printing in different colours, to achieve a simple multicolour effect. Some of the decorative versions may predominantly have been designed by the Monotype office, with Gill examining, critiquing and approving the designs sent to him by post. The long series of extensions, redrawings and conversions into new formats of one of Monotype's most important assets (extending long beyond Gill's death) has left Gill Sans with
11040-662: The representation of Etruscan epigraphy , and in c. 1745 , the Caslon foundry made Etruscan types for pamphlets written by Etruscan scholar John Swinton . Another niche used of a printed sans-serif letterform from 1786 onwards was a rounded sans-serif script typeface developed by Valentin Haüy for the use of the blind to read with their fingers. Towards the end of the eighteenth century neoclassicism led to architects increasingly incorporating ancient Greek and Roman designs in contemporary structures. Historian James Mosley ,
11160-635: The same style such as Helvetica and Univers. Mosley has commented that in 1960 "orders unexpectedly revived" for the old Monotype Grotesque design: "[it] represents, even more evocatively than Univers, the fresh revolutionary breeze that began to blow through typography in the early sixties." He added in 2007 "its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the ... prettiness of Gill Sans". As an example of this trend, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert 's corporate rebranding of BR as British Rail in 1965 introduced Helvetica and Univers for printed matter and
11280-495: The simply crafted round calligraphic handwriting style, written with a broad pen, known today as the foundational hand (what Johnston originally called a slanted pen hand, which was developed from Roman and half-uncial forms). He influenced a generation of British typographers and calligraphers, including Graily Hewitt , Irene Wellington , Harold Curwen and Stanley Morison , Alfred Fairbank , Florence Kingsford Cockerell , Eric Gill and Percy Delf Smith . He also influenced
11400-643: The slanting cut at top left of the regular "t" is replaced with two separate strokes. From the bold weight upwards Gill Sans has an extremely eccentric design of "i" and "j" with the dots smaller than their parent letter's stroke. Morison commissioned Gill to develop Gill Sans after they had begun to work together (often by post since Gill lived in Wales) on Gill's serif design Perpetua from 1925 onwards; they had known each other since about 1913. Morison visited Cleverdon's bookshop while in Bristol in 1927 where he saw and
11520-744: The spirit of modernity, using the German slogan " die Schrift unserer Zeit " ("the typeface of our time") and in English "the typeface of today and tomorrow" ; many typefaces were released under its influence as direct clones, or at least offered with alternate characters allowing them to imitate it if desired. In the post-war period, an increase of interest took place in "grotesque" sans-serifs. Writing in The Typography of Press Advertisement (1956), printer Kenneth Day commented that Stephenson Blake's eccentric Grotesque series had returned to popularity for having "a personality sometimes lacking in
11640-450: The standard of common sans-serif types of the period, many of which now seem somewhat lumpy and eccentrically-shaped. In 1922, master printer Daniel Berkeley Updike described sans-serif typefaces as having "no place in any artistically respectable composing-room." In 1937 he stated that he saw no need to change this opinion in general, though he felt that Gill Sans and Futura were the best choices if sans-serifs had to be used. Through
11760-483: The standard typeface by the LNER railway company, soon appearing on every facet of the company's identity, from metal locomotive nameplates and hand-painted station signage to printed restaurant car menus, timetables and advertising posters. The LNER promoted their rebranding by offering Gill (who was fascinated with railway engines) a footplate ride on the Flying Scotsman express service; he also painted for it
11880-533: The stationery of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. As Updike's comments suggest, the new, more constructed humanist and geometric sans-serif designs were viewed as increasingly respectable, and were shrewdly marketed in Europe and America as embodying classic proportions (with influences of Roman capitals) while presenting a spare, modern image. Futura in particular was extensively marketed by Bauer and its American distribution arm by brochure as capturing
12000-432: The subtlety of design and spacing of the metal type, for which every size was drawn differently. In the hot metal era different font sizes varied as is normal for metal type, with wider spacing and other detail changes at smaller text sizes; other major sans-serif families such as Futura and Akzidenz-Grotesk are similar. In the phototype period Monotype continued to offer two or three sizes of master, but all of this subtlety
12120-482: The term "sans-serif" became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these terms for sans-serif was "grotesque", often used in Europe, and " gothic ", which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in typeface names like News Gothic , Highway Gothic , Franklin Gothic or Trade Gothic . Sans-serif typefaces are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as
12240-510: The test of time, we avoid the trap of going down a modish route that might look outdated in several years' time". This was not Gill's only association with the BBC, as he had designed sculptures and other artwork that are on display at the broadcaster's London headquarters, Broadcasting House . In 2017, the BBC began to phase out Gill Sans in favour of a proprietary corporate font family, "Reith" (named after its first general manager John Reith ), which
12360-570: The time it was not possible to print in large sizes. This makes tracing the descent of sans-serif styles hard, since a trend can arrive in the dated, printed record from a signpainting tradition which has left less of a record or at least no dates.) The inappropriateness of the name was not lost on the poet Robert Southey , in his satirical Letters from England written in the character of a Spanish aristocrat. It commented: "The very shopboards must be ... painted in Egyptian letters, which, as
12480-492: The time of release. Neo-grotesque type began in the 1950s with the emergence of the International Typographic Style , or Swiss style. Its members looked at the clear lines of Akzidenz-Grotesk (1898) as an inspiration for designs with a neutral appearance and an even colour on the page. In 1957 the release of Helvetica , Univers , and Folio , the first typefaces categorized as neo-grotesque, had
12600-572: The transition from Gothic to Roman letters in Germany, and Anna Simons was a student. He also lectured in Dresden in 1912. In 1921, students of Johnston founded the Society of Scribes & Illuminators (SSI), probably the world's foremost calligraphy society. Not all his students were happy with his decision to create a sans-serif design for the Underground, in a style thought of as modernist and industrial. His pupil Graily Hewitt privately wrote to
12720-447: The typeface's body size, which equals to about 28 points. Although it is known from its appearances in the firm's specimen books, no uses of it from the period have been found; Mosley speculates that it may have been commissioned by a specific client. A second hiatus in interest in sans-serif appears to have lasted for about twelve years, until Vincent Figgins ' foundry of London issued a new sans-serif in 1828. David Ryan felt that
12840-424: The whole business of sans-serif from its nineteenth-century corruption" of extreme boldness. Johnston apparently had not tried to turn the alphabet (as it was then called) that he had designed into a commercial typeface project. He had tried to get involved in type design before starting work on Johnston Sans, but without success since the industry at the time mostly created designs in-house. Morison similarly respected
12960-508: The year after its release the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) chose it for all its posters, timetables and publicity material. British Railways chose Gill Sans as the basis for its standard lettering when the railway companies were nationalised in 1948. Gill Sans 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
13080-559: Was "perhaps an improvement" and more "fool-proof" than Johnston's. Johnston and Gill had drifted apart by the beginning of the 1920s, something Gill's groundbreaking biographer Fiona MacCarthy describes as partly due to the anti-Catholicism of Johnston's wife Greta. Frank Pick , the Underground Electric Railways Company managing director who commissioned Johnston's typeface, privately thought Gill Sans "a rather close copy" of Johnston's work. Following
13200-467: Was an enthusiastic backer of the project, Monotype's engineering manager and type designer Frank Hinman Pierpont was deeply unconvinced, commenting that he could "see nothing in this design to recommend it and much that is objectionable". (Pierpont was the creator of Monotype's previous mainstay sans-serif, a loose family now called Monotype Grotesque . It is a much less sculptured design inspired by German sans-serifs.) Morison also intervened to insist that
13320-557: Was begun in 1932; some of the first drawings may have been prepared by Gill's son-in-law Denis Tegetmeier. It made a return to popularity in the graphic design of the 1970s and 80s, when Letraset added a condensed weight. The boldest weights of Gill Sans, including Kayo, have been particularly criticised for design issues such as the eccentric design of the dots on the "i" and "j", and for their extreme boldness. (Gill Sans' standard weight is, as already noted, already quite bold by modern standards.) Gill argued in his Essay on Typography that
13440-399: Was designed and of when it was used." (At this time the idea that sans-serif typefaces should form a consistent family, with glyph shapes as consistent as possible between all weights and sizes, had not fully developed: it was quite normal for families to vary as seemed appropriate for their weight until developments such as the groundbreaking release of Univers in 1957.) In the light weights,
13560-406: Was designed to be more legible on mobile devices , and did not require licensing for continued use. The font was adopted by the BBC's corporate logo in 2021. Sans-serif#Humanist In typography and lettering , a sans-serif , sans serif ( / ˈ s æ n ( z ) ˈ s ɛ r ɪ f / ), gothic , or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called " serifs " at
13680-638: Was impressed by Gill's fascia and alphabet. Gill wrote that "it was as a consequence of seeing these letters" that Morison commissioned him to develop a sans-serif family. In the period during and after his closest collaboration with Johnston, Gill had intermittently worked on sans-serif letter designs, including an almost sans-serif capital design in an alphabet for sign-painters in the 1910s and some capital letter signs around his home in Capel-y-ffin , Wales. Gill had greatly admired Johnston's work on their Underground project, which he later wrote had "redeemed
13800-464: Was lost on transfer to digital. To replicate this, it is necessary to make manual adjustment to spacing to compensate for size changes, such as expanding the spacing and increasing the weight used at smaller sizes. Former ATypI president John Berry commented of Gill Sans' modernised spacing that "both the regular weight and especially the light weight look much better when they're tracked loose". In contrast, Walter Tracy wrote in 1986 that he preferred
13920-450: Was not alone in being adapted: both Erbar and Dwiggins' Metro would undergo what historian Paul Shaw has called a "Futura-ectomy" to conform to taste. After Gill's death, Monotype created versions for the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. Monotype also added additional features not found in the metal type, notably text figures and small capitals. According to Rhatigan and other sources, by
14040-543: Was often used for headings and commercial printing, many early sans-serif designs did not feature lower-case letters. Simple sans-serif capitals, without use of lower-case, became very common in uses such as tombstones of the Victorian period in Britain. The first use of sans-serif as a running text has been proposed to be the short booklet Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of
14160-561: Was one of the editors of The Imprint , a periodical for the printing industry. For this paper, Monotype made a complete new font: Imprint , series 101, exclusively for use in The Imprint . Actually this was the first revival character font Monotype made. In the 9 issues of The Imprint , many articles about calligraphy were included. He has also been credited for reviving the art of modern penmanship and lettering single-handedly through his books and teachings. Johnston also devised
14280-573: Was remarried, to a sister of Robert Chalmers, 1st Baron Chalmers . Johnston's half-brother, Andrew Johnston (1897–1917), was killed when his aeroplane crashed while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War . After studying published copies of manuscripts by architect William Harrison Cowlishaw , and a handbook by Edward F. Strange, he was introduced to Cowlishaw in 1898 and then to William Lethaby , principal of
14400-484: Was undeniable, it was possible to be bored by them and to begin to rebel against the bland good taste that they represented. In fact we were already aware by 1960 that they might not be around to bore us for too long. The death of metal type ... seemed at last to be happening. While extremely popular in Britain, and to a lesser extent in European printing, Gill Sans did not achieve popularity with American printers in
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