wdr@wang.com (William Ricker) (03/26/91)
tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: >That GillSans supplied with Adobe Type Manager 1.1 is a pretty weird >font, isn't it! Glad to hear GillSans is being bundled. (I wish the foundry type I'm picking up (approx. 30 Lbs) today were GillSans rather than Futura, but I can't quibble at salvage prices.) > I hate the tiny x-height as far as 300dpi printing goes. I haven't played with GillSans, but I sould guess at 300dpi you don't want to try small point-sizes. How does it look on a linotronic? > Doesn't it look like the face the Brits use on their street and >tube signs and a lot of their adverts? Yes. Eric Gill was the apprentice to the type designer (whose name I forget) who designed the face for the London Metro (tube stations). Gill Sans does bear a *very* strong resemblence to the Metro face, but Gill denied any connection between his Sans face and his master's Metro. I suppose it is possibly as overused in Britain as Helvetica, Courier, and Times are in the States, but I wasn't attuned to such things when I was there. [Source: a poster on type families, probably distributed by Adobe but maybe by CG or BitStream, that hangs in our human factors lab.] -- /bill ricker/ wdr@wang.com a/k/a wricker@northeastern.edu *** Warning: This account not authorized to express opinions ***
Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) (03/27/91)
From: William Ricker <wdr@wang.com> Message-Id: <b2usw2.67h@wang.com> >> Doesn't [Gill Sans] look like the face the Brits use on their street >> and tube signs and a lot of their adverts? > Yes. Not quite. Johnston Underground Font is used by London Regional Transport -- that is, the underground train stations and busses and all their adverts: it is the corporate font. So far as I am aware it is used nowhere else. Street signs etc. throughout the UK are set in more modern (and hence boring) sanserif type -- similar to Helvetica. As you walk up the stairs from a tube station into a main line station, everything changes from Johnston's font to Helvetica as you move from LRT's world to British Rail's world. On the other hand I seem to be the only person to notice this :-) Johnston's font is one of the chief pleasures of using the tube... > Eric Gill was the apprentice to the type designer (whose name I forget) Edward Johnston -- the pioneering calligrapher. The Underground font & Gill Sans have features in comon with Johnston's Foundational Hand -- the Underground font has diamond-shaped dots and punctuation marks, in true calligraphic style. Damian (I have presented the above as fact but most of it is surmise and hearsay...)
amy@circus.camex.com (Amy Lindsay) (03/27/91)
Gill Sans (Monotype 1928-30.) Designed by Eric Gill. It owes something to
the letters designed by Edward Johnston for the Underground Railways in
1918. In some ways it is closer in design to the original sans serifs than
the modern German versions. There is a more uniform width of the capitals
and th only points are at the feet of the V and W. The final stroke of the
G is shorter than in the German versions. The M is square and the middle
strokes descent half-way. In the lower case the a, g, and t follow the
normal roman designs, but there are alternative sorts.
From "Encyclopedia of Type Faces" by Jaspert, Berry & Johnson, published by
Blanford Press, in the UK. (posted without permission, typos are mine.)
A.G.Lindsay Internet: amy@camex.com (otherwise, use your best guess.)
Typography & Design Department ~ Camex, Inc. ~ Boston, MA (617-426-3577)
"Slip...Landing technique to compensate for crosswinds in which pilot crosses
controls to dramatically reduce lift (see falling rocks.)"