The typeface designs of Eric Gill

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Eric Gill's life and his work as an engraver and sculptor have been documented extensively, most notably in Fiona MacCarthy's biography 'Eric Gill' (1989) and Chistopher Skelton's 'Eric Gill - the engravings' (1990). However, while widely known and admired, his work as a typeface designer has never received the same attention - the only book on the subject is Robert Harling's 'The letter forms and type designs of Eric Gill' (1976) which is just 64 pages long.Gill designed ten typefaces, all in the period 1926-34. By far the best known is Gill Sans, originally manufactured by the Monotype Corporation in 1928 - every computer now comes with a digital version. Gill Sans was the British answer to the geometrically constructed sans serif typefaces that were becoming popular on mainland Europe at the time. It has become arguably the most British of typefaces, used by British Railways, Penguin Books, the BBC, the Church of England, and the British government. His other well known typeface designs are Perpetua and Joanna, but the remainder - Perpetua Greek, Golden Cockerel Type, Solus, Aries, Floriated Capitals, Bunyan and Jubilee - are unknown to most designers and five have never been produced as digital typefaces.For most of the twentieth century the design of typefaces was a two-stage process: the designer would make drawings and then a team of engineers would implement the design, often making changes to the design in order to make it work technically. In some cases this led to a dialogue between designer and engineer but often, having done the initial drawings, the designer left it to the engineers to make the necessary adjustments, to make decisions about letter spacing, and in some cases even to design the accompanying light and bold variants of the typeface.This project will investigate the conception and production of each of Gill's typefaces and his relationships with the men and women who commissioned and implemented his designs and will discuss his work as a type designer in relation to his contemporaries in the field. In doing so it will re-evaluate Gill's contribution to typeface design. Can he really be described as a typeface designer, or were the typefaces that are attributed to Gill actually designed by the craftsmen and engineers who made them? As an artist, did Gill actually involve himself in the more mundane aspects of manufacturing hot metal type or did he remain aloof from the industrial part of the process? Did the production of Gill's typefaces for hot metal composition differ from those of other artists and designers of the period, or from the typefaces produced in-house by companies such as Monotype and Linotype?The project will also analyze the extent to which the physical process of hot-metal typeface manufacture affected the appearance and functionality of Gill's typefaces. Were his ideas compromised because of limitations imposed by the technology, and is the original method of manufacture still in evidence in later versions of his typefaces, produced for photocomposition and digital typesetting? And what can today's typeface designers learn from this?The research will draw extensively on the Eric Gill archives held by St Bride Library and the British Monotype Corporation Type Drawing Office. This will be facilitated at St Bride Library by the Librarian, Mr Nigel Roche, who has worked at St Bride for thirty-three years and at Monotype by the Type Development Manager, Mr Robin Nicholas, who has forty years' involvement in typeface development in a range of capacities. It will also make use of other Gill archives including those at Ditchling Museum, Sussex, Tate Britain, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.