Gill Sans

History

In typography Gill Sans is among one of the unique typefaces, it is named after the British designer Eric Gill. In 1916, the British designer Eric Gill assisted in a project with Edward Johnson, they create a typeface for the London Underground. A few years later in 1927, Eric Gill was asked to design a typeface so he simply revised the existing alphabet of Johnsons. Gill Sans it was based on the original sans-serif lettering that was designed by Johnston for London Underground. Gill also designed Perpetua and Joanna typefaces, which he used on his book "An Essay on Typography".

Characteristics

Gill Sans contains over 14 different variations including Gill Sans Light, Light italic, Regular, italic regular, Bold, Bold …show more content…
The British Government in 2003 adopted Gill Sans for use in all communications and logos as its standard typeface. In most parts of the world the typeface became part of the public domain in 2011. Gill Sans is the official corporative typeface of the Spanish Government, Gobierno de España.

Gill Sans has played an important role in 2009 for President Barack Obama; he used Gill Sans for his United States presidential logo election during the campaign for presidency.

Tommy Hilfiger: is easily recognized by the blue, white and red rectangular logo, as well as their logotype set in a sans serif named Gill Sans.

Gill Sans was used for the Athens 2004 Olympics. It proves an excellent typeface when working with logo design and negative space. Its simple and sturdy characters exude a certain confidence and a powerful identity.

Sotheby's changed its logo's typeface from a historic serif to a clean, modern Gill Sans-based sans serif. The goal of the redesign was maintaining the image of a modern global brand while also reflecting the heritage of a company that has been in business for almost 300 …show more content…
It is classified as a humanist sans serif, making it very legible and readable in text and display work, even though Gill Sans is the great text face that has never actually been used much for continuous reading according to the Monotype website. After researching Gill Sans, I have found a lot of films especially comedy films have used this font, most recently in 2011 for the comedy “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” film, and in the popular children’s animated film “Chicken little”. According to Bram Pitoyo, he explained that Gill Sans implies a sense of history, “momentousness” and classicism; almost all funny movies titles and posters were set in Gill Sans Ultra Bold and Extra Bold. Gill Sans is the funny movies font. Gill Sans has been built-in as a system font in Mac OS X as well as Adobe CS and some of Microsoft’s products. Gill Sans will always be a typeface that will be used, even today so many different usage of this typeface. I researched a lot and found there are a lot more designers using Gill Sans, like in Singapore a grocery shop called “Jones” use Gill Sans on all their branding. Though very legible, Gill Sans is very British and been used in comedy film, this can lack a certain dramatic impact and should not be used for headlines. Gill Sans wouldn’t be used today for a news headline, or when a san serif font is used for