Eric Gill Research

Eric Gill:
Eric Gill (1882-1940) was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and print maker who was associated with the arts and craft movement. In 1925 he designed the 'Perpetua' typeface with the uppercase based upon monumental Roman inscriptions. He then designed Gill Sans in 1927-1930 based on the sans serif lettering originally designed for the London Underground. He collaborated with Edward Johnston in the early design of the Underground typeface but dropped out before it was completed. In 1930-31 he designed the typeface Joanna. Below are these typefaces.

Here is the old London Underground design that Eric contributed to and inspired his Gill Sans font. The first and last letters are a larger font size then a border is added above and below the smaller middle letters so that the whole strip is the same height and nothing is ascending or descending out of this area. The two borders could represent rail tracks as they are parallel. The font used for 'London' and 'Transport' seems to have less weight, probably because it is a smaller font size and so is clearer like this. All the text is in upper case. This also increases readability. This logo has since been changed, this could suggest Eric Gills design was not successful. However it may have just been changed to stay relevant and modern.

"An in-situ example of Gill's design and personal cutting of his Perpetua typeface can be found in the nave of Poling church in West Sussex, on a wall plaque commemorating the life of Sir Harry Johnston."

Here is Eric Gills Perpetua typeface. It is a serifed font. Here the letters are kerned quite close together throughout but the spacing between the words vary on each line. For example the first line reads' In Memory Of'. The spaces in between these words is noticeably bigger than the spacing between 'Author And Painter' five lines down. This is because the first line has less characters on and so takes up less of the width of the plaque. To make it take up more room without increasing the font size it has to be kerned between words . The text here is centred, ragged right left and all in uppercase. This makes it symmetrical and professional.