Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!ox-prg!culhua!Damian.Cugley From: Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: Re: Gill Sans (was Re: ATM 1.1) Message-ID: Date: 27 Mar 91 13:49:00 GMT References: <73552092@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Sender: news@prg.ox.ac.uk Organization: /mclab/pdc/.organization Lines: 34 In-reply-to: wdr@wang.com's message of 25 Mar 91 18:04:47 GMT From: William Ricker Message-Id: >> Doesn't [Gill Sans] look like the face the Brits use on their street >> and tube signs and a lot of their adverts? > Yes. Not quite. Johnston Underground Font is used by London Regional Transport -- that is, the underground train stations and busses and all their adverts: it is the corporate font. So far as I am aware it is used nowhere else. Street signs etc. throughout the UK are set in more modern (and hence boring) sanserif type -- similar to Helvetica. As you walk up the stairs from a tube station into a main line station, everything changes from Johnston's font to Helvetica as you move from LRT's world to British Rail's world. On the other hand I seem to be the only person to notice this :-) Johnston's font is one of the chief pleasures of using the tube... > Eric Gill was the apprentice to the type designer (whose name I forget) Edward Johnston -- the pioneering calligrapher. The Underground font & Gill Sans have features in comon with Johnston's Foundational Hand -- the Underground font has diamond-shaped dots and punctuation marks, in true calligraphic style. Damian (I have presented the above as fact but most of it is surmise and hearsay...)