Font Family

History

Gill Sans was created in 1928 by the English sculptor, sign painter, type designer and wannabe social reformer Eric Gill. After a short stint as an apprentice to an architect, Gill attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, where he studied lettering under calligrapher Edward Johnston.

In 1914, Gill met a typographer, Stanley Morison, and began working for the Monotype Corporation - an independent English company based in Surrey. After reviving several classical type stylesto serve as the foundation of the new Monotype typeface library. Morison wanted to develop a modern face that could compete with the popular and successful new sans serif fonts, such as Futura.

Morison saw lettering by Gill that used many of the same letterforms as Edward Johnston's signage typeface, used for the London Underground system. It struck Morison that a typeface based on this alphabet would be highly marketable. Thus, Eric Gill was given the job of creating Gill Sans. Which is also refered to be a Humanist Font.