Typeface · Sans-serif

Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype in 1928.

About Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype in 1928. It is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate typeface 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 a bookshop in Bristol, and Gill painted a fascia for the shop for him using 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.

From the Wikipedia article “Gill Sans”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Using Gill Sans in a book

Sans-serif faces work well for headings, captions, children's books and modern nonfiction. For long-form body text in print, most designers still prefer a serif.

Commercial typefaces require a licence that covers embedding in PDFs and ebooks; check the foundry's licence before you publish.

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