  gill sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by eric gill. the original design appeared in 1926 when douglas cleverdon opened a bookshop in his home town of bristol, where gill painted the fascia over the window in sans-serif capitals that would later be known as gill sans. in addition, gill had sketched a design for cleverdon, intended as a guide for him to use for notices and announcements. gill further developed it into a complete font family after stanley morison of monotype commissioned the development of gill sans to compete with 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. gill was a well established sculptor, graphic artist and type designer, and gill sans takes inspiration from edward johnstonâs johnston typeface for london underground, which gill had worked on while apprenticed to johnston. 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 font of 'classic simplicity and real beauty', it was intended as a display font that could be used for posters and advertisements, as well as a text face for documents such as book blurbs, timetables and price lists than need to be clearly legible at small sizes. its standard weight is slightly bolder than most normal body text faces. an immediate success, the year after its release the london and north eastern railway chose it for all the lner
1926_introductions Humanist_sans-serif_typefaces Public_domain_typefaces Typefaces_with_infant_variants