Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by Eric Gill and published by the Monotype Corporation between 1928 and 1930. Based on Edward Johnston's font for the London Underground, Gill Sans is widely admired for its quiet gracefulness and versatility.
It was notably used by the London and North Eastern Railway and later by British Railways.
Since 1997 the BBC has used Gill Sans as the font for the lettering in its logo, and many derivative uses such as the logos of individual services.
Included with Mac OS X, Gill Sans has found its way into numerous books, advertisements, and signs.
In the Bitstream font collection, Gill Sans is called Bitstream Humanist 521.
Companies using Gill Sans
- Carlton Television
- BBC
- mmo2
- The London Underground font, Johnston Underground , is similar to Gill Sans but is easily distinguishable (for example, the dots above the lowercase "i"s in Johnston are diamond shaped; on Gill Sans they are round).
- L.J. Hooker
- Network Rail
- Folio Young Enterprise, a publishing company based in Colchester, UK.
Sample
The following paragraph is in Gill Sans, Gill Sans MT, or Bitstream Humanist 521 if it installed in your machine. If not, a monospace font is used:
