Gill Sans
I was assigned to research the Gill Sans typeface for my communications design class. An example of the font is shown below.
Gill Sans is a sans serif typeface that was designed by Eric Gill in 1928.
Gill Sans was commissioned by an influential printing company, Stanley Morison, in order to compete against a newer wave of German geometric sans-serif fonts such as Futura and Erbar.
The typeface is commonly used in English railway systems, the cover of Penguin books, as well as becoming a system font in Mac and Microsoft computers. BBC also used the typeface for many purposes including its logo. Other notable businesses that use Gills Sans range from Tommy Hilfiger and Saab.
Gill Sans has many interesting features — Eric Gill blended Johnston (another typeface, developed by Edward Johnston), classic serif typefaces, and Roman inscriptions. The proportions of Gill Sans are supposedly somewhat Roman in the uppercase, while traditional serif in lower. The holes/apertures are wider in Gill Sans fonts than other serif fonts, while the “a” remains in a double-story style, unlike the “a”s of geometric sans-serifs. Furthermore, the “a” narrows at the top of its loops, unlike most other sans-serifs. The Gill Sans “O” is almost a perfect circle and the “M” is quite geometric, as it seems to be formed from a square with the middle strokes meeting at the center. The “t” also has a curve, unlike Futura, a font that Gill Sans was designed to compete against.
Poster
After discovering that Gill Sans was prominently used in the London Underground as well as many signs and books, I wanted to create a poster that reflected its history while emphasizing its major points. I chose the final two sketches, as I could create a more dynamic shape with the letters, emphasize the “g” of Gill Sans, and maybe create a more sophisticated poster than the ones I had sketched before
This was the first iteration of the poster, before I had chosen to iterate on the sketches focused on letters. As Gill Sans was used in the London Underground, I used the Underground logo on the top, and tilted the entire assembly to create a more dynamic view. At the time, I thought splitting the poster in half with black and white could create a clean separation with a lot of contrast. The dots on the lines represent the railway stops of the London Underground. Unfortunately, the black creates too heavy of an image on the upper side of the poster, and the spacing feels too compact and clumped.
This was my first iteration that I more or less improved on and built different versions of. I decided to go with a modern and chic blue to emphasize the “g” as well as its recency, since it was created in 1928. I was debating between using an “a” or an “s” as the second letter, since “s” stood for the sans in Gill sans and the calligraphy-like “a” was a prominent feature of Gill Sans. To add some depth, history, and appeal to the poster, I created the image below — it resembles railway or subway systems, reflecting its usage in the London Underground.
I created several iterations based off my first design, altering the colors and theme to try to achieve my desired image. I added several pieces of information pertaining to the history and usage of Gill Sans in the spaces of the “g” to emphasize its double-story, and filled in some white space as not to unintentionally create too much white space that could unbalance the poster. The extremely small size of the text creates three levels of hierarchy — the first one being the font name Gill Sans itself, the second being the designer, date, and font type, and the third being its history. The two rectangles — with information about the creator and the date it was created, as well as what type of font it is — frame the square or quadrilateral formed by the large Gill Sans text. The image of the railway stops below fades out as the text comes in to create a more comfortable and less cramped feel. I also added every single letter, number, and character of Gill Sans as to show what they looked like to possible customers or consumers.
I decided on this iteration for my final, as I like this combination of colors the best. Black and light blue creates a very modern and sleek look, as opposed to the previous themes above, such as a light olive and blue, which exuded more youth and frivolousness, which was an atmosphere I did not want to convey. Black and blue retains the youth, but the black emphasizes the “g” and creates hierarchy by emphasizing the “a” in “Sans” to a far lesser degree.
I learned a lot about typefaces and the impact it created on writing, design, advertising, and more; I’m quite satisfied with my progress and I hope that my poster effectively introduces the Gill Sans font.
