Left: Eric Gill as a young man, 1908 (Photo: Harry Ransom Center) Right: Drawing by Eric Gill, 1933 (Photo: St Bride Library via ) The font was released commercially by Monotype in 1928 as Gill Sans. A Monotype advisor, Morison commissioned Gill to develop a complete font family to compete with the sans-serif designs released by German foundries fueled by the overwhelming success of Futura. The alphabet, which at the time only contained uppercase letters, was noticed by Stanley Morison for its commercial potential. Gill also sketched a guide for the bookshop owner, Douglas Cleverdon, who later published the work in A Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon. Eric Gill, Essay on Typography, published 1931ĭrawing heavily on Johnston’s work, Gill first experimented with his ‘improvements’ in 1926 when he hand-painted lettering for a bookshop sign in his hometown, Bristol. Some of these letters are not entirely satisfactory, especially when it is remembered that, for such a purpose, an alphabet should be as near as possible ‘fool-proof’… as the philosophers would say-nothing should be left to the imagination of the sign-writer or enamel-plate maker. The first notable attempt to work out the norm for plain letters was made by Mr Edward Johnston when he designed the sans-serif letter for the London Underground Railways. Not completely satisfied with Johnston’s work, Gill set out to create the perfect, legible typeface. Left: Johnston Sans printing blocks now on display at the London Transport Museum, 1913 (Photo: Kaihsu Tai, Wikipedia) Right: London's Underground roundel set in Johnston Sans (often confused as Gill Sans), designed 1919 (Photo: danorbit, Flickr) Creating a ‘fool-proof’ typeface Eric Gill, who had studied under Johnston at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts, later became a friend and apprentice-and even had a small role assisting in creation of the proprietary typeface.

The history of Gill Sans stems from Edward Johnston’s iconic typeface, Johnston Sans, designed for the London Underground in 1913.

Called the “ Helvetica of England,” the sixth installment in our ‘Know your type’ series is the humanist sans-serif Gill Sans.

Letter s gill sans font images