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Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. The original design was created in 1926 when Douglas Cleverdon opened a bookshop in his home town of Bristol, for which Gill painted a fascia over the window in sans-serif capitals. In addition, Gill sketched a design for Cleverdon as a guide for him to use for notices and announcements. Gill developed his design into a typeface on the commission of Stanley Morison of Monotype, who hoped that the design could be a competitor to the sans-serif Erbar, Futura and Kabel families, which were being launched in Germany during the latter 1920s. Gill Sans was released in 1928 by Monotype, initially as a set of titling capitals that was quickly followed by a lower-case. Gill was a well established sculptor, graphic artist and type designer, and Gill Sans takes inspiration from Edward Johnston’s ''Johnston'' alphabet for London Underground, which Gill had worked on while apprenticed to Johnston; this had attracted considerable attention but as a corporate font was not available for licensing. Gill's aim was to blend the influences of Johnston, classic serif typefaces and Roman inscriptions to create a design that looked both cleanly modern and traditional at the same time. Marketed by Monotype as a design of 'classic simplicity and real beauty', it was intended as a display typeface that could be used for posters and advertisements, as well as for the text of documents that need to be clearly legible at small sizes or from a distance, such as book blurbs, timetables and price lists.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://theredlist.com/wiki-2-343-917-998-view-type-profile-gill-eric.html )〕 Designed before setting documents entirely in sans-serif text was common, its standard weight is noticeably bolder than most modern body text fonts. An immediate success, the year after its release the London and North Eastern Railway chose it for all its posters, timetables and publicity material, a use later extended across all British railways.〔(East Coast Joys: Tom Purvis and the LNER )〕 It also soon became used on the modernist, deliberately simple covers of Penguin books, and was sold up to very large sizes which were often used in British posters and notices of the period.〔 The popularity of Gill Sans influenced many other typefaces, and helped to define the genre of the humanist sans-serif. Monotype expanded the original regular or medium weight into a large family of styles, such as condensed, schoolbook and shadowed versions, which it continues to sell. A basic set is distributed with iOS and Mac OS X and with some Microsoft software as Gill Sans MT. ==Characteristics== Gill Sans has less of a mechanical feel than more geometric sans-serifs like Futura and realist sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, because its proportions stemmed from Roman tradition (for its upper case) and traditional serif lettering (for the lower case). The upper-case of Gill Sans is partly modelled on monumental Roman capitals like those found on the Column of Trajan. Some aspects of Gill Sans have a geometric feel: the ''O'' is an almost perfect circle and the capital ''M'' is based on the proportions of a square with the middle strokes meeting at the centre of that square; this was not inspired by Roman carving but is very similar to Johnston. The 'R' with its widely splayed leg is Gill's preferred design, unlike that of Johnston; Mosley has suggested that this may be inspired by an Italian Renaissance carving in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102495/monument-to-marchese-spinetta-malaspina-monument-firenze-antonio-da/ )〕 The humanist influence is noticeable in the two-story lower-case ''a'' and ''g,'' unlike that of Futura. The lower-case ''t'' is similar to old-style serifs in its proportion and oblique terminus of the vertical stroke, while the lower-case ''a'' has a dramatic narrowing towards the top of its loop extremely rare in sans-serif fonts. Following the humanist model the lower-case italic ''a'' becomes single story and the lower-case ''p'' has a vestigial calligraphic tail reminiscent of the italic of Caslon. Like most serif fonts (but unlike most sans-serif fonts), several weights and releases of Gill Sans use ligatures to allow its expansive letter ''f'' to join up with or fit around following letters. The basic glyph shapes do not look consistent across font weights and widths, especially in Extra Bold and Extra Condensed widths, while the Ultra Bold style is effectively a different typeface altogether and was originally marketed as such. Indeed, even the lighter weights are somewhat inconsistent. Monotype executive Dan Rhatigan has commented that "Gill Sans grew organically...() takes a very ‘asystematic’ approach to type. Very characteristic of when it was designed and of when it was used." (It should be noted that at this time the idea that sans-serif typefaces should form a consistent family, with glyph shapes consistent between all weights and even sizes, had not fully developed: it was quite normal for fonts to vary as seemed appropriate for their weight.) Past the bold weight the designs have an extremely eccentric design of 'i' and 'j' with the dots (tittles) smaller than their parent letter. ==History== Morison commissioned Gill to develop Gill Sans after they had worked together on releasing Gill's serif design Perpetua from 1925 onwards. Morison is known to have visited Cleverdon's bookshop while in Bristol in 1927, although this may not have been the exact point of the project's genesis. Extensive material on the development of Gill Sans survives through records in Monotype's archives at Salfords and in Gill's papers. While the capitals resemble Johnston quite closely, the archives document Gill (and the Monotype team, who developed a final precise design and spacing) grappling with the challenge of creating a viable sans-serif lower-case and italic. Early concept art for the italic looked very different, with swashes on many capitals, resulting in a design somewhat similar to Goudy Sans. The final released italic was more restrained, almost an oblique in many characters such as the 'e'. In the upright style, particular areas of discussion were the 'a' (several versions and sizes in the hot metal era had a straight tail like Johnston's or a mildly curving tail) and the b, d, p and q, where some versions (and sizes, since the same weight would not be identical at every size) had stroke ends visible and others did not. Wedge cuts at the top of ascenders were also considered.〔 Monotype executive Dan Rhatigan, author of an article on Gill Sans's development after Gill's death, commented that Monotype's archives contain "enough () for a book just about the b, d, p, and q of Gill Sans." While Morison was an enthusiastic backer of the project, Monotype's engineering manager and type designer F.H. Pierpont was reportedly unconvinced by the project, commenting that he could "see nothing in this design to recommend it and much that is objectionable."〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=https://www.myfonts.com/person/Frank_Hinman_Pierpont/ )〕 To cater for the tastes and national printing styles of different countries, Monotype developed a set of alternate characters. These include Futura-inspired designs of ''N, M, R, a, g, t'' and others, a Garamond-inspired ''W'', an ''R'' with a tighter leg, an alternative ''Q'' with swash tail (a design preferred by the LNER), oblique designs as opposed to the standard true italic, a more curvaceous italic ''e'' and several alternative numeral designs.〔 In particular, in the standard designs for Gill Sans the numeral 1, upper-case i and lower-case L look identical, so an alternate 1 was sold for number-heavy situations where this could otherwise cause confusion, such as on price-lists.〔 Most alternate characters were not offered in any digitisation until the 2015 Nova release (see below), restoring Gill's first choices at the expense of user choice, but the alternate 1 was included in the Monotype Pro release and the alternate a and g returned in a digitised infant edition. Gill was involved in the design of these alternates, and Monotype's archive preserve notes that he rethought the geometric designs. Other work such as the decorative versions may more have been designed by the Monotype office, with Gill examining, critiquing and approving the designs sent to him. Gill's son-in-law Denis Tegetmeier may also have prepared drafts of Kayo. The series of drawings, extensions and redrawings of one of Monotype's most important designs (extending long beyond Gill's death) has left Gill Sans with a great range of alternative designs and releases. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gill Sans」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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