London Underground / New Johnston Family
Tiro TypeWorks
>Does anyone know if either the pre or preferably post 1984 London
>Underground faces ([Old] Johnston and New Johnston respectively) are
>available either as originals or some good shareware/freeware lookalikes.
I'm afraid you're out of luck. London Transport will not release the
design and guard it very jealously with all their legal might. Among
good quality fonts, Gill Sans is of course the closest in style to
Johnston. Since the design, and not just the software code, of a
typeface can be copyrighted in Britain, no one seems to have been
barmy enough to risk the wrath of LT in the shareware/freeware realm.
John Hudson, Type Director
Tiro TypeWorks
Vancouver, BC
ti...@portal.ca
http://www.portal.ca/~tiro
Nick Perry
Underground faces ([Old] Johnston and New Johnston respectively) are
available either as originals or some good shareware/freeware lookalikes.
If it helps the original Johnston was designed by Edward Johnston c 1915-6
and the new cut by Banks & Miles. I think in both cases they were
specifically for LU and probably not licenced elsewhere but I am just
guessing.
Any pointers would be helpful.
Nick
--
| Nick Perry | OSWALD: "I didn't come here to
| | shoot the President."
| nick....@amulation.co.uk | BOOTH: "He didn't come here to get
| http://info.ox.ac.uk/~kebl0005 | shot." Sondheim - Assassins
Mr.A.Wilson
almost becoming a FAQ!! I asked the same question myself some
time ago. As far as I know, the position is this: LT guard
the copyright of Johnston *very* closely and the fonts are
not available to the general public. However, there *is*
a very good likeness to (old) Johnston. This is Granby
Medium. I have looked in the "Encyclopaedia of Typefaces"
and compared the two; they are *almost* identical to the
naked eye, *except* for the fact that the lower-case g in
Granby is an "open" g, whereas that in Johnston is "closed".
There are other weights of Granby - I believe that the
Graphics Unit of LT actually recommended Granby Elephant
to another member of this newsgroup as the best lookalike
for heavier weights of (New) Johnston - but these are slightly
different faces and are not simply lighter or heavier clones
of Granby Medium; they are poorer imitations of Johnston. So,
Granby Medium is your best bet. There are other fonts with
close similiarities - notably Gill Sans - but Granby is the
closest. You can buy it from FontWorks UK (sorry, don't have
the address etc. to hand).
Hope this helps.
Andrew Wilson
Christopher Fynn
"Tiro TypeWorks" writes:
> I'm afraid you're out of luck. London Transport will not release the
> design and guard it very jealously with all their legal might.
> Since the design, and not just the software code, of a
> typeface can be copyrighted in Britain, no one seems to have been
> barmy enough to risk the wrath of LT in the shareware/freeware realm.
Good for them - just hope that no Tory politicians are reading this
or they might privatise the font.
--
Christopher J Fynn <cf...@sahaja.demon.co.uk>
Ian E. Petersen
>nick....@amulation.co.uk (Nick Perry) wrote:
>>Does anyone know if either the pre or preferably post 1984 London
>>Underground faces ([Old] Johnston and New Johnston respectively) are
>>available either as originals or some good shareware/freeware lookalikes.
There exists a PostScript (Macintosh) version of New Johnston
copyright 1991 by Signus Design.
Who Signus Design are, or where you can get this font, I don't know.
I hope this helps
Greetings from
Ian E. Petersen
10056...@compuserve.com
Peter - from London
(Mr.A.Wilson) wrote:
>I believe that the
>Graphics Unit of LT actually recommended Granby Elephant
>to another member of this newsgroup as the best lookalike
Quite correct ( 'twas me ).
Granby Elephant comes from Berthold in digital form - I believe other
weights are/were available for photosetting.
Bill Troop
copyright issue. All patents and copyrights are
for a limited time only, and I don't know of any
copyright protection that extends much beyond 50
years. If that is so, how could "Old Johnston",
-- which, if it was validly copyrighted, was copyrighted
in 1916 -- still be entitled to protection? And
did London Transport ever attempt to prosecute
Eric Gill or Monotype for releasing Gill Sans,
which is clearly a derivative work? Moreover,
assuming that the "Old Johnston" was in the
public domain by the time "New Johnston" was
released (1979?), how much protection is New Johnston
entitled to as a derivative work of a font
in the public domain?
Jeffrey Joel
wrote:
> I am having a little difficulty with the Johnston
> copyright issue. All patents and copyrights are
> for a limited time only, and I don't know of any
> copyright protection that extends much beyond 50
> years. If that is so, how could "Old Johnston",
> -- which, if it was validly copyrighted, was copyrighted
> in 1916 -- still be entitled to protection? And
> did London Transport ever attempt to prosecute
> Eric Gill or Monotype for releasing Gill Sans,
> which is clearly a derivative work? Moreover,
> assuming that the "Old Johnston" was in the
> public domain by the time "New Johnston" was
> released (1979?), how much protection is New Johnston
> entitled to as a derivative work of a font
> in the public domain?
I believe that copyright in the UK (and Europe) extends 50 years after the
copyright holder's death (if it's an individual; I don't know what happens if
the copyright is held by a corporation). Since Johnston died in the mid- to
late-1940's (not sure of exact date) that would mean that the copyright is
just now expiring. I know that my reprint copy of Johnston's book
(Writing,...) is copyright 1977 by Barbara Johnston and someone else, and
that in a recent (last few months) Dover catalogue I saw the book offered as
a new reprint. I suggested it to Dover in 1980 when I was searching out
copies and learned that the US/Taplinger reprint had gone out of print; since
they are usually prompt about responding, I think that it may have taken
until now for the book to come out of UK copyright.... (But I haven't seen
this edition and don't know if it's different from the Taplinger one
(published in the UK by A&C Black, London).)
JJ
- via BulkRate
Jeffrey Joel
wrote:
> I'm not a lawyer, but companies do not just die; if they go bust, the
> designs and copyrights are usually sold to the highest bidder; if the
> company is taken over, then the rights pass to the new controlling
> company. I think the legal phrase is "succesors in law" or similar. Is
> there a lawyer in the house? As London Underground Ltd. (the successor to
> London Transport) is still owned by the Government, presumably the
> ultimate copyright holder is the Queen.
Yes, that sounds right. Most companies in the US are set up to exist "in
perpetuity", which was why I wondered in the first place. I don't have a copy
of the Copyright Act, but "successors in law" would be the correct phrase.
JJ
- via BulkRate
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
wrote:
> > did London Transport ever attempt to prosecute
> > Eric Gill or Monotype for releasing Gill Sans,
> > which is clearly a derivative work?
Eric Gill was, I believe, a student of Edward Johnston, so it is not
surprising that they have similar qualities in their work.
To say that Gill (the typeface) is derivative of Johnston (the typeface)
is akin to saying Frutiger is derivative of Gill, or Meta of Frutiger,
since they follow a clear lineage of humanist sans development.
Clive Bruton (AKA The Typonaut)
cl...@typonaut.demon.co.uk (new mail address!)
Nick Perry
Underground's New Johnstone typeface (thanks' everyone for the responses)
it got me thinking about the typeface (actually probably font as I have
only ever seen one weight) used for UK road signs. An odd little number
really but rather effective and clear. It follows the very English school
handwriting model in style and is very distinctive.
Does anyone have any history on this face? Who owns the copyright (if
any)? Is it a custom face? If so who commissioned it? Who designed it?
How is its use controlled?
Just curious this time...
Thanks
Christopher Fynn
bilt...@ix.netcom.com "Bill Troop" writes:
...
> >With regard to the Gill design, I would hesitate to use the term
> >'derivative'. Priscilla Johnston's biography of her father records his
> >own observation that, while work on the LT typeface was progressing
> >(slowly, as with all Johnston's work), Gill was an almost daily
> >visitor to the house and frequently advised on the design. Gill, you
> >must remember, had been trained as an architect and was used to
> >working on large scale letterforms and with the problems of sign
> >writing and in situ lettering. His advice to Johnston would have been
> >invaluable. When he came to do his own sans, Gill approached the task
> >in the same way that he and Johnston had thought out and discussed
> >during the design of the latter's type. Both men were in agreement
> >from the beginning that the proper source for a sans serif design was
> >in the proportions of classical roman letterforms. Gill, of course,
> >always ackowledged his debt to the earlier design, but it was a model
> >which both men were certain, from the outset, was the only way to do
> >the job properly. The Gill design is not so notable for its similarity
> >to Johnston's, but in the small but important ways in which it
> >differs; it is, in the end, a better typeface because of these
> >differences.
> >
> Both Underground and Gill Sans seem to me to be eminently 20th
> century designs, and to owe a great deal more to the Edwardian
> lettering that LT used just prior to 1916 than to classical Roman
> models. I would agree that Gill Sans is a substantially more
> usable typeface, but cannot accept it is anything but a
> skillful modification of Underground. In any case, Gill's training
> as an architect and sign letterer would not help him make
> a good typeface, and his advice, at this point in his career,
> may have accounted for the bad fitting and incorrect choices
> of letterforms which Walter Tracy reluctantly draws attention to
> in his myth-breaking discussion of Underground.
>
> Bill.
Edward Johnston was a teacher of calligraphy at the Central
School of Arts and Crafts where, in 1898, he was the seventeen
year old Gill's teacher and mentor. Of that time Gill
wrote that Johnston `profoundly altered the whole course
of my life and all my ways of thinking' and he says that when
he saw Johnston write with a pen `and I saw the writing that
came as he wrote, I had that thrill and tremble of the heart
which oterwise I can only remember having had when first I
touched her body or saw her hair down for the first time'.
At the Central School school Gill also studied stone cutting
and masonry.
From 1901 to 1902, when Johnston was married, Gill shared
living quarters with him at Lincoln's Inn. Later they were
neighbours in Hampstead and Ditchling. Gill wrote the final
chapter `Inscriptions in Stone' in Johnston's book "Writing &
Illuminating & Lettering" published in 1906. In the mid 1910's
they had established their own press and from 1916- 1923
together with Pepler published the magazine "The Game".
When Johnston was designing the lettering for the London
Underground Gill was commissioned by them to produce relief
sculptures for their headquarters and several stations and Gill
participated in the original design discussions for Johnston's
lettering design.
Gill strongly believed in craft guilds and apprenticeship and
freely acknowledged his debt to Johnston in the design of Gill
Sans. When Gill was commisioned to design a sans serif
typeface it seems quite natural that he used the lettering
design of his mentor and friend Edward Johnston as a model. It
is quite likely that he was even commisioned to design this
typeface because he was a student of Johnston. Johnston's
design had also inspired Futura and Erbar which were already
successful typefaces in Europe by 1928 when Gill Sans was
designed.
Given their close relationship I think that Gill Sans might be
considered as a tribute by Gill to his friend and mentor Edward
Johnston - certainly not as a clone or rip-off design.
Chris
Tobias Benjamin Koehler
and new Johnston fonts is?
--
tobias benjamin koehler ,-/o"O`--.._ _/(_
t.ko...@tu-bs.de _,-o'.|o 0 'O o O`o--'. e\
un...@tigerden.com (`o-..___..--''o:,-' )o /._" O "o 0 o : ._>
``--o___o..o.'' :'.O\_ ```--.\o .' `--
can be found somewhere `-`.,) \`.o`._
in central europe fL `-`-.,)
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
Bill Troop <bilt...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>...and I have
>seen a commercially available font which purports to be
>based on these drawings, but does not appear to have
>been licensed from LT. I can't think of the name of
>the face at the moment.
Perhaps you mean Agenda by Font Bureau, from the FB Type Specimens book:
"Designed by Greg Thompson... Agenda is a fresh humanist sanserif
inspired by Edward Johnston's magnificent London Transport face..."
So it is inspired by, rather than a "clone", of Johnston. In fact it is as
different to Johnston as Gill, if indeed this is the font to which you
refer.
>Both Underground and Gill Sans seem to me to be eminently 20th
>century designs, and to owe a great deal more to the Edwardian
>lettering that LT used just prior to 1916 than to classical Roman
>models. I would agree that Gill Sans is a substantially more
>usable typeface, but cannot accept it is anything but a
>skillful modification of Underground.
A very skillful modification, which somehow manages to show its influence
throughout all of Gill's work including the serifs. Boy, he was some clever
little forger.
>In any case, Gill's training
>as an architect and sign letterer would not help him make
>a good typeface,
Then what would?
>and his advice, at this point in his career,
>may have accounted for the bad fitting and incorrect choices
>of letterforms which Walter Tracy reluctantly draws attention to
>in his myth-breaking discussion of Underground.
Oh, right, of course, it was all Eric Gill's fault wasn't it.
Don't you get it, Gill and Johnston were friends, they worked together,
they advised each other. Surely they would have some common ideas on type
design, without needing to plaguerise the others work.
cl...@typonaut.demon.co.uk (note the new mail address!)
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
rh...@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Richard Hunt") wrote:
>Next year, the copyright period in European Union countries is being
>increased to seventy years after the copyright holder's death. This a
>result of harmonization - the copyright period in all EU Member States is
>being brought into line with the German standard.
Do you know if ther are any moves for EC wide type "design" copyright,
outside the UK, France and Germany?
Tiro TypeWorks
>Both Underground and Gill Sans seem to me to be eminently 20th
>century designs, and to owe a great deal more to the Edwardian
>lettering that LT used just prior to 1916 than to classical Roman
>models. I would agree that Gill Sans is a substantially more
>usable typeface, but cannot accept it is anything but a
>skillful modification of Underground. In any case, Gill's training
>as an architect and sign letterer would not help him make
>a good typeface, and his advice, at this point in his career,
>may have accounted for the bad fitting and incorrect choices
>of letterforms which Walter Tracy reluctantly draws attention to
>in his myth-breaking discussion of Underground.
Yes, of course they are eminently 20th century designs, but their
distinguishing characteristic is that they are based on the
proportions of the classical lettering that Johnston was in the habit
of writing and that Gill was in the habit of carving in stone. I'm not
making this up, or even deducting it from observation (though one
might): both men explicitly stated that this was their aim and their
achievement. Johnston (who was often painfully humble about his own
work) said any credit the typeface deserved was due to the classical
models on which he had based his proportions; Gill said any credit
Gill Sans deserved was due to Johnston, and that the latter's
achievement was to have translated classical forms into sans serif
forms.
Johnston was designed primarily as a sign font. I've had the privilege
of handling the large wooden type LT used from 1916 onward. It was not
a text face and, in this regard, even Gill's early experience put him
in a position to advise Johnston, who had very little experience with
large letterforms. If Gill's advice, as you suggest, was not always
the best, it doesn't alter the fact that he was sitting in Johnston's
living room in Ditchling almost every night while the design was in
progress.
There is, by the way, a great deal to be said for 'skillful
modification'.
Bill Troop
is the cutesy face that was used directly before the Johnston Sans.
It sounds a great deal more posh to say "Roman Inscriptions" than
"Commercial Edwardian". My point is that whatever these types owe
to the proportions of classical letters, they owe even more to their
immediate predecessors, as a glance confirms: Underground was so
like its predecessor, in fact, that the layout on some of the pre-
and post-Underground posters, particularly in the word "Underground",
did not even have to be changed.
As to "Classical Roman Proportion, Tracy appears not to think
that this claim will stand up to scrutiny:
"He said that his 'block'letter was based on classical
Roman capital proportions. Certainly his capitals avoid
the squareness of earlier sans- serif faces, though E
and F are wider than classical models and the short-
centered M and the meat-hook S are hardly
traditional. The lowercase is a different matter.
Johnston started by deciding that the 'o' must be
circular, and he evidently thought that the bowls
of the other letters should be a section of the same
circle. (There was a good deal of 'geometry' in the
capitals, too.) The idea is reasonable, although a
circle is always duller than an oval. The widths
of all the other lowercase letters related to the
o."
In other words, there is as much geometry in these
faces as in the geometric sanses!
>Johnston was designed primarily as a sign font. I've had the privilege
>of handling the large wooden type LT used from 1916 onward. It was not
>a text face and, in this regard, even Gill's early experience put him
>in a position to advise Johnston, who had very little experience with
>large letterforms. If Gill's advice, as you suggest, was not always
>the best, it doesn't alter the fact that he was sitting in Johnston's
>living room in Ditchling almost every night while the design was in
>progress.
What I meant, and what Walter Tracy meant, was precisely that
Underground does not scale down to text well. Question: in what
font were the London Transport schedule books printed in the
1960s?
>There is, by the way, a great deal to be said for 'skillful
>modification'.
Of course there is. I just resent some of the mythologizing
that surrounds Underground and Gill Sans. The basic look
of the two typefaces is extremely close, and it takes more
than a second to tell which is which in signage. Thus
when London Transport goes on about the unique appearance
of Underground, and the unique character it gives to
London Transport's signage, I am a little outraged, because
all of England was plastered with Gill Sans in the 1930s and
1940s, and there is only a subtle difference between signage
in Underground and signage in Gill Sans. Only a sophisticated
typographer would care to select one for a certain project,
and the other for another. In terms of an overall look,
both Underground and Gill Sans characterize a great deal of
England at certain points in history. By the way, when
British Rail was using either Underground or Gill Sans, which
was it?
Tracy also points out that features in Gill's drawings
that were presumably intended to differentiate it
from Underground were, in fact, removed by the
Monotype drawing office to which, Tracy says,
'the design owes a good deal . . . '
Re Tracy's criticism of Underground as type, not
signage, he notes that it was made into metal
type in 1922, and 'it was in the lower sizes
that the defects in the lowercase were liable to
become visible and, to some eyes, irritating.'
It would be possible to say that Tracy was, perhaps,
overinclined to take an oppposite point of view just
for the sake of it, but he did look very carefully
at a number of type-myths, and I find his observations
persuasive. His discussions about the geometrical
features in Gill and Underground, and the
UNgeometrical features in, say, Futura, make
one realize that there is perhaps as much spin-making
in the rarefied regions of type history as anywhere
else -- and it is something we have to watch out
for when listening to descriptions of typefaces.
Bill.
Bill Troop
>In message ID <48nkbp$i...@ixnews7.ix.netcom.com> on 11/19/95, Bill Troop
>wrote:
>
>> > did London Transport ever attempt to prosecute
>> > Eric Gill or Monotype for releasing Gill Sans,
>> > which is clearly a derivative work?
>
>Eric Gill was, I believe, a student of Edward Johnston, so it is not
>surprising that they have similar qualities in their work.
>
>To say that Gill (the typeface) is derivative of Johnston (the typeface)
>is akin to saying Frutiger is derivative of Gill, or Meta of Frutiger,
>since they follow a clear lineage of humanist sans development.
I don't follow this, since Gill and Underground are almost
interchangeable, whilst Gill and Frutiger are not. With regard
to the characterization of Underground and Gill as "humanist"
designs, to distinguish them from so-called "geometric"
designs such as Futura, Erbar, and Kabel, Tracy has pointed
out that both Underground and Gill owe much to geometry,
and adds:
"[By about 1940 ....] Gill Sans meant nothing to American
typographers, and very little to European ones -- a state
of affairs which Monotype tried to remedy by producing an
alternative version of four of its capitals, nine lower-
case letters, and seven numerals (but not an alternative
name) to enable the type to be converted into a close
imitation of Futura, which was then the chief representative
of the other species sans-serif then current.
Question: where is Gill's humanism and Futura's geometry
if all it takes is four caps and nine lowercase letters
to convert one into a "close imitation" of the other?
Question: why should anyone object to the characterization
of Gill Sans as a copy, clone, or slight modification of
Underground merely because the designers were friends?
What has friendship got to do with the similarity between
two typefaces? Except to cloud our outlook? Is it because
the designers were friends that we look for words that
appear to make the typefaces as different as possible,
in spite of the clear ocular proof of their near-identity?
*If* Monotype had permitted Gill to use his original
Perpetua-like d and p, the typefaces would have looked
a little more unalike; on the other hand, though, Gill's
original a is almost identical to Johnston's, though it
is more finely modelled, with greater contrast.
Tracy's discussion of Underground makes it clear that he
does not buy much else that has been said of Underground:
"Johnston established the stroke weight of the face by a
method that is natural to the professional calligraphser . . . .
If Johnston had studied type founders' specimen books,
*as he had said he intended to do*, he would probably
have realized ... [that he would have been] at liberty
to establish the the stroke weight independently of
the capital height. More importantly, Johnston should
have learnt from observation of examples of type that
where curves flow into stems, in sans-serif as well as
seriffedtypes, the curves have to be made thinner if the
illusion of evennes is to be maintained and a clotted
effect at the joint is to be avoided. If he had been
aware of that fact he might have made his b, d, p, and
q better integrated, the g more graceful, and the
crotch of n and other letters more incisive.
Bill Troop
SEND button by accident!
... "*It has been said* that he took great care of
of the spacing of the letters, *but his tests for that
purpose have not been described*. If he had tested
his lowercase letters in word combinations, with
due attention to their appearance when doubled, he
would surely not have been satisfied with the
gappy effect of the letter l (el) with its over-wide
curved foot. The foot itself was a good invention to
differentiate the letter from the capital I; but it
was so broad that the letter stood aloof from the one
that followed."
With regard to the spacing of Gill, Tracy adds,
"As noted . . . its fitting was a little too
loose for a sans-serif. In some filmsetting
versions the character spacing has been
slightly reduced, with a consequent
improvement in the texture of the type
in text sizes."
Bill.
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
Troop.
I cannot have a debate with anyone who starts with the premise that Gill
and Johnston (or as Bill refers to it "Underground") are identical. Unless
we are all confused and Bill refers to an unknown (to me) font really
called Underground that is a dead ringer for Gill.
There is to me as clear a distinction between Gill and Johnston as there is
between Gill and Frutiger, or to make it plainer Helvetica and Univers,
and, Futura and Avant Garde (or the combinations of Gill/Johnston/Agenda).
To quote on the geometry of Gill and the humanist structure of Futura is
nonsense, as can be clearly demonstrated by looking at various samples of
17/18th centry "constructed" lettering/designs, clearly showing (though IMO
spuriously so) the geometric construction of classical serif letterforms.
Anyone familier with Gill also knows of the role played by the Monotype
Drawing office, which if anything put a more humanist feel into the design.
Gill is very clearly, to anyone who knows type, *not* a geometric sans and
is also clearly based on classical forms. It is not a clone or copy of
Johnston, and is not interchangable with Futura. The version of Gill that
survives worldwide today is the same as that sold in the UK by Monotype
from it's first release. One cannot account for the poor taste of other
markets which required adaptions to Gill to make it into something it never
was, history tells a clear enough tale, what design is it which survives
today?
I suppose that I should also concede that the people getting most upset
about Bill's assertions are the various Brits and ex-pats scattered around
the world, some coincidence? Not really, Gill is considered amongst the
cognoscenti as much an institution as... The Magic Roundabout:-)
And all this from the man who insists that Univers is a humanist sans.
- Clive
Richard Hunt
> In article <DIC9I...@cix.compulink.co.uk>,
> rh...@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Richard Hunt") wrote:
>
> >Next year, the copyright period in European Union countries is being
> >increased to seventy years after the copyright holder's death. This a
> >result of harmonization - the copyright period in all EU Member States
> is >being brought into line with the German standard.
>
> Do you know if ther are any moves for EC wide type "design" copyright,
> outside the UK, France and Germany?
No, I don't - perhaps when they stopped the software business by banning
telephone and email credit card transactions, they'll get round to it.
Richard Hunt
Liam R. E. Quin
> By the way, when British Rail was using either Underground or Gill Sans,
> which was it?
Gill Sans.
There's a widely-reproduced photograph of Eric Gill standing beside the
front of the Flying Scotsman, with his lettering on its boiler plate.
The Flying Scotsman was too much for Eric, though, and he never got inside
the kilt. :-) :-)
Lee
--
Liam Quin, SoftQuad Inc +1 416 239 4801 l...@sq.com <URL:http://www.sq.com/>
HexSweeper NeWS game;OPEN LOOK+XView+mf-fonts FAQs;lq-text unix text retrieval
Alan Blacklock
> The Flying Scotsman was too much for Eric, though, and he never got inside
> the kilt. :-) :-)
However Eric Gill was photographed on more than one occasion wearing
a voluminous smock and from one of the biographies (I have forgotten which)
he was wont to go without nether garments. It would seem that perhaps
he could have been quite comfortable in a kilt.
Alan
just another exiled Scot who is a wannabe typenerd
Tiro TypeWorks
>But the one thing nobody ever mentions in discussions of Underground
>is the cutesy face that was used directly before the Johnston Sans.
>It sounds a great deal more posh to say "Roman Inscriptions" than
>"Commercial Edwardian". My point is that whatever these types owe
>to the proportions of classical letters, they owe even more to their
>immediate predecessors, as a glance confirms: Underground was so
>like its predecessor, in fact, that the layout on some of the pre-
>and post-Underground posters, particularly in the word "Underground",
>did not even have to be changed.
Well, Edward Johnston was an Edwardian, and appears to have remained
so until his death. That said, I don't think anyone is about to
describe his typeface as 'cutesy' despite superficial similarities to
other designs of his time. That LT's designers chose, in some few
instances not to change the layout of new posters hardly reflects on
the nature of the typeface. The comment by one LT designer that 'We
can fit more Johnston on a poster than any other typeface' (ie.
Johnston is so readable, even in mass) does reflect on the design.
>As to "Classical Roman Proportion, Tracy appears not to think
>that this claim will stand up to scrutiny:
>"He said that his 'block'letter was based on classical
>Roman capital proportions. Certainly his capitals avoid
>the squareness of earlier sans- serif faces, though E
>and F are wider than classical models and the short-
>centered M and the meat-hook S are hardly
>traditional. The lowercase is a different matter.
>Johnston started by deciding that the 'o' must be
>circular, and he evidently thought that the bowls
>of the other letters should be a section of the same
>circle. (There was a good deal of 'geometry' in the
>capitals, too.) The idea is reasonable, although a
>circle is always duller than an oval. The widths
>of all the other lowercase letters related to the
>o."
It would be difficult for lowercase letters to follow 'Classical Roman
Proportion' as, I presume you are aware, classical Roman's had no
lowercase. This has always meant that the wise type designer has had
to modify the proportions of his uppercase letters to sit well with a
lowercase alphabet. This means that it is almost impossible to follow
the proportions of classical Roman letterforms exactly: I challenge
you to devise a lowercase that would sit comfortably with Carol
Twombly's Trajan and not look too odd to be acceptable. There is, and
always has been, give and take in these porportions, but by basing
one's work on the classical model one retains the sensibility of that
model regardless of stylistic variation (eg. sans serif). This is
Johnston's (and Gill's) achievement.
>In other words, there is as much geometry in these
>faces as in the geometric sanses!
Try to find a sans serif in which underlying geometry isn't a trifle
obvious. If this newsgroup had a graphical interface I'd take the time
to demonstrate the underlying geometry of the letters on Trajan's
column.
I would hope, in the LT design offices and elsewhere, that
sophisticated typographers are at work. If 99% of the people standing
on the platform at Tottenham Court Road tube can't tell the difference
between Johnston and Gill, that doesn't alter the fact that there is a
difference. I certainly notice it; not only in individual signs and
posters, but in the overall atmosphere of the tube stations: they
would feel different if they were full of Gill.
>snip
>It would be possible to say that Tracy was, perhaps,
>overinclined to take an oppposite point of view just
>for the sake of it, but he did look very carefully
>at a number of type-myths, and I find his observations
>persuasive. His discussions about the geometrical
>features in Gill and Underground, and the
>UNgeometrical features in, say, Futura, make
>one realize that there is perhaps as much spin-making
>in the rarefied regions of type history as anywhere
>else -- and it is something we have to watch out
>for when listening to descriptions of typefaces.
Tracy makes a lot of good points, but much of what he says can be used
to support my own contentions. He discusses the fact that Johnston
seems not to have studied other typefaces in any detail, which
contributes to the problems encountered when JS is used as a text
face. Any similarity of the type to contemporary (or immediately
preceding) 'Edwardian commercial' designs, seems best attributed to
the sensibilities of the age, rather than direct derivation.
Tracy comments that Morison was impressed by Gill's shop sign
lettering, and this was the inspiration behind the development of Gill
Sans. Gill's painted sans serif letterforms developed directly from
the proportions of his serifed carvings (almost any two samples can be
compared to reveal this). If Gill himself acknowledges following
Johnston's lead, I still maintain that the idea behind both types was
developed by both men, together, in Ditchling, and that the idea
developed from their dual experience as lettering artists working in
different media at different scales.
Yes, 'spin-making' has gone on: witness Tracy's essay (and all the
others) about Stanley Morison's design of Times Roman.
Sorry, but I doubt if I will have time to pursue this discussion much
further.
Jeffrey Joel
> I'm not
> making this up, or even deducting it from observation (though one
> might): both men explicitly stated that this was their aim and their
> achievement.
Aside from my agreement with the rest of what you said in your post, I *do*
slightly object to subtracting things from observations. I hope you meant
"deducing".
JJ
- via BulkRate
Liam R. E. Quin
> [...] it got me thinking about the typeface [...] used for UK road signs.
Here is an article I saved earlier (as they used say on Blue Peter)...
Lee
| Newsgroups: comp.fonts
| From: t...@puffball.demon.co.uk (Tim Rylance)
| Subject: British Road Sign Lettering
| Organization: Tim Rylance, Bath, UK
| Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 11:04:04 +0000
| Message-ID: <Cnu42...@puffball.demon.co.uk>
|
| Bhagavat Dharma <Bhag...@dharma.demon.co.uk> writes:
|
| Road Signs in the UK seem to be a version of the [London Underground] font.
|
| I'd like to get a copy of this, but I don't want to break the bank.
| Any ideas anyone?
|
| British Road Signs use lettering designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret
| Calvert in the early 1960s. See Ruari McLean's "Thames & Hudson Manual
| of Typography" (Thames & Hudson 1980) page 65 or Robin Kinross's
| "Modern Typography: an essay in critical history" (Hyphen Press 1992)
| page 167. The motorway lettering differs from that used on other
| roads -- I must admit that I had not noticed this and it is not obvious
| looking at the examples in the "Highway Code".
|
| An interesting sidelight on the choice of sans lettering can be found
| in Montague Shaw's "David Kindersley: his work and workshop" (Cardozo
| Kindersley editions 1989)
|
| It is one of the misfortunes of the creative person that his sensible work
| is, from time to time, set aside in favour of a vastly inferior article,
| by ignorant judges who are swayed by fashion and an uneducated taste.
| About this time, the new motorway signs were being discussed, and a
| lettering style chosen. Probably fearing the worst, Brooke Crutchley
| arranged a meeting between himself, DK and Stanley Morison who was then the
| most revered typographical scholar in England, if not the world. Fashion
| was promoting a Swiss sanserif typeface for roadsigns throughout Europe.
| The matter was put to practical test in England. DK's purpose-built
| alphabet and the proposed sanserif were submitted to the Road Research
| Laboratory for a comparative report. Recognition and legibility at speed
| were the criteria. The laboratory tested twenty-five signs in lower-case
| and twenty-five signs in DK's capitals. DK's were better in every single
| case. But the sanserif was used.
|
| Kindersley's MOT serif is shown on pages 20 and 21 of Shaw's book; it looks
| very similar to the lettering used for street names in Cambridge (UK), which
| I believe was also done by Kindersley.
|
| Kinross, however, praises the Kinneir/Calvert lettering
|
| These signs were the first, in any country, in which `visual' and
| `functional' considerations were fused. They marked a new turn in British
| typography. And, in the subtelties of their letterforms and of their rules
| for configuration, the signs showed a sophistication beyond the grasp of a
| title-page and inscription-bound traditionalism.
|
| The Kinneir/Calvert lettering is available as a Type 1 font. Quoting
| the 29th October 1993 issue of the UK MacUser
|
| Granthams Graphic Technology has released a set of transport
| typefaces. The two PostScript Type 1 scalable fonts, called Transport
| Heavy and Transport Medium, have been approved by the Department of
| Transport. The fonts include signs and displays found on all UK roads,
| and are designed for use in layouts, illustrations and signs. The
| fonts cost #185 and are not sold separately.
|
| Granthams +44 772 250207
|
| I have not seen these fonts, and cannot say whether they are worth the
| (somewhat bank-breaking) price asked.
|
| --
| Tim Rylance <t...@puffball.demon.co.uk>
Laurence Penney
>I cannot have a debate with anyone who starts with the premise that Gill
>and Johnston ... are identical.
Unless I misunderstood Bill, you're misrepresenting him.
>There is to me as clear a distinction between Gill and Johnston as there is
>between Gill and Frutiger, or to make it plainer Helvetica and Univers,
>and, Futura and Avant Garde ...
No two of these are identical - nor interchangeable, except in the rather
uninteresting subjective sense.
>To quote on the geometry of Gill and the humanist structure of Futura is
>nonsense, as can be clearly demonstrated by looking at various samples of
>17/18th centry "constructed" lettering/designs, clearly showing (though IMO
>spuriously so) the geometric construction of classical serif letterforms.
The humanist/geometric(/lineale) debate is the classic quandary of
taxonomy. What to do if your "mental clusters" are misaligned with someone
else's, or with the pigeon-holes of an "approved" classification scheme?
In biology, arguments can sometimes be settled genetically, but there's
nothing so conclusive for type!
Gill and Johnston, the typefaces, sit very closely in my mental structure
of font space - and presumably also Bill Troop's, Eric Gill's and Walter
Tracy's. There's little room for a useful font "between" them. Gill and
Johnston sit apart from other "humanist sans".
For me, Univers sits closer to Syntax, Meta and Frutiger than to its usual
taxonomic associate, Helvetica. Whether this makes it "humanist" I don't
choose to declare. Maybe I'm unduly influenced as a fan of its designer,
but I like to think it's a quality of its curve shapes. And Univers's
ampersand... surely that humanistically sourced form is grotesquely(!) out
of place in a so-called (by some) "lineale".
I'm not clear what your point is regarding the constructions of 17th
century dilettantes. My appreciation of Gill Sans grew steadily over many
years from an initial, barely sensed impression of simplicity, to a
profound respect for its ultra-plain (geometric) stems and the more
"drawn" sensation of its curves. Futura's initial impression of simple
geometry was replaced by an deep admiration for the "right" way the mostly
circular curves join the stems, especially in bold.
Whether any classification scheme makes sense is asking whether it
corresponds well to your mental clusters. If you reject commonly accepted
ones, other people may well challenge the validity of your clusters. And
there will always be borderline cases causing self-proclaimed cognoscenti
- like cartographers carving up Africa in the 19th century - to demand
that *their* borders be widely respected.
-- Laurence Penney
David Lemon
ric...@calcaria.compulink.co.uk (Richard Hunt) wrote:
> Christopher Fynn <cf...@sahaja.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Should the lettering designed for motorway signs even be
> >considered a typeface? It was not designed as a printing type.
>
> >Similarly Tracy's criticisms of Johnston's Underground seem to
> >be to do with it's use as a text type - this seems misdirected
> >as this design was created for signs and posters.
>
> Interesting point. What *is* a font - is there a maximum size beyond
> which letters stop being part of a font and become design elements?
Why should there be a threshold size at which type stops being type? I've
always thought a typeface was a set of letterforms and associated glyphs
designed to compose together (a font is the physical instantiation of a
typeface - these days usually in a software program). That doesn't imply
an upper bound to display size.
> I'd say that, in size terms, a font is really something that is or
> might be used in printed work to make words. Generally, we don't see
> type in newspapers or magazines much bigger than 60 points, for
> headlines, and I'd venture that the median size for nespaper and
> magazine type is around 8 points.
Aside: Newspaper type did average around 8 points a generation or two ago,
but has been creeping up in size; I believe the average is now slightly
greater than 10 points. The average for magazines may be a bit smaller,
but not by much.
As to upper bounds, note that there were fonts of wood type cut a century
ago in which the glyphs were sometimes half a foot tall. Wood was used
because that much metal became awkward to work with, but it was still a
font. Also note that Adrian Frutiger's epinonymous typeface began as an
airport signage system, but nobody I know disputes that it's a great
typeface design.
- David Lemon
type nerd
Back in my quaint garden jaunty zinnias vie with flaunting phlox.
Richard Hunt
>Should the lettering designed for motorway signs even be
>considered a typeface? It was not designed as a printing type.
>Similarly Tracy's criticisms of Johnston's Underground seem to
>be to do with it's use as a text type - this seems misdirected
>as this design was created for signs and posters.
Interesting point. What *is* a font - is there a maximum size beyond
which letters stop being part of a font and become design elements?
I'd say that, in size terms, a font is really something that is or
might be used in printed work to make words. Generally, we don't see
type in newspapers or magazines much bigger than 60 points, for
headlines, and I'd venture that the median size for nespaper and
magazine type is around 8 points.
Richard Hunt - email rh...@cix.compulink.co.uk or ric...@calcaria.compulink.co.uk
**from Tadcaster in rural North Yorkshire**
Peter Zelchenko
Tiro TypeWorks <ti...@portal.ca> wrote:
>It would be difficult for lowercase letters to follow 'Classical Roman
>Proportion' as, I presume you are aware, classical Roman's had no
>lowercase. This has always meant that the wise type designer has had
>to modify the proportions of his uppercase letters to sit well with a
>lowercase alphabet. This means that it is almost impossible to follow
>the proportions of classical Roman letterforms exactly: I challenge
>you to devise a lowercase that would sit comfortably with Carol
>Twombly's Trajan and not look too odd to be acceptable. There is, and
>always has been, give and take in these porportions, but by basing
>one's work on the classical model one retains the sensibility of that
>model regardless of stylistic variation (eg. sans serif). This is
>Johnston's (and Gill's) achievement.
I disagree. Catich has rendered lower-case letters to accompany
the Romans many, many times. I even have sets of 7" exemplars for
them, and we've considered digitizing them as an accompaniment to
Trajan. Also, many of the greatest type designs in existence (Goudy
Old Style, Gill Sans) look utterly comfortable with their Roman-
descended majuscules and Carolingian-descended minuscules. If you
look too hard, you might sense something is amiss, but that is just
your "Roman capitals" sensitivity fighting your "Carolingians"
sensitivity. Look at the two together, leaving your left brain
behind, and you see a nice synthesis.
>Try to find a sans serif in which underlying geometry isn't a trifle
>obvious. If this newsgroup had a graphical interface I'd take the time
>to demonstrate the underlying geometry of the letters on Trajan's
>column.
Only insofar as the line and the round are renderable by the human
hand, and that the edged writing tool describes its ribbon effect.
If you've ever tried to letter with a flat brush, especially Roman
capitals, you know that your hand has to twist to get the pleasing
entasis and ductus, and there's nothing less "geometric" than that
unless you want to argue reductio ad absurdum.
--
Peter Zelchenko (pe...@chinet.com) | Design Engineer
1757 W. Augusta Blvd. | (Whatever that means.)
Chicago, Illinois 60622-3209 |
312-RED-BIRD | I'm freelancing again!
Bill Troop
>Conclusion: We've heard a lot from Walter Tracy and very little from Bill
>Troop.
>
I would like to say that this is an observation, not
a conclusion, but I cannot deny that I have been
hiding behind Walter Tracy's ample skirts in this
matter. Given the passions these discussions
engender, can you blame me?
Bill.
Bill Troop
time to pursue this discussion, I want to respond
to one paragraph:
[BT quoting Walter Tracy]
>>"He said that his 'block'letter was based on classical
>>Roman capital proportions. Certainly his capitals avoid
>>the squareness of earlier sans- serif faces, though E
>>and F are wider than classical models and the short-
>>centered M and the meat-hook S are hardly
>>traditional. The lowercase is a different matter.
>>Johnston started by deciding that the 'o' must be
>>circular, and he evidently thought that the bowls
>>of the other letters should be a section of the same
>>circle. (There was a good deal of 'geometry' in the
>>capitals, too.) The idea is reasonable, although a
>>circle is always duller than an oval. The widths
>>of all the other lowercase letters related to the
>>o."
>
[Your response]
>It would be difficult for lowercase letters to follow 'Classical Roman
>Proportion' as, I presume you are aware, classical Roman's had no
>lowercase. This has always meant that the wise type designer has had
>to modify the proportions of his uppercase letters to sit well with a
>lowercase alphabet. This means that it is almost impossible to follow
>the proportions of classical Roman letterforms exactly: I challenge
>you to devise a lowercase that would sit comfortably with Carol
>Twombly's Trajan and not look too odd to be acceptable. There is, and
>always has been, give and take in these porportions, but by basing
>one's work on the classical model one retains the sensibility of that
>model regardless of stylistic variation (eg. sans serif). This is
>Johnston's (and Gill's) achievement.
>
Tracy was not suggesting that there was a Roman lowercase.
That is why he put in the sentence "The lowercase is a
different matter." But has anyone actually measured the
upper case capitals against Roman models? And as for sensibility,
what possible aesthetic correspondence, on any level, can
there be between the M and S of Underground and Roman models?
Aren't we taking the Roman Inscription story a little too
literally? And why should we be concerned if what a (great)
artist has to say about his or her work does not
correspond with observable facts particulrly well? Since
the Underground lower case to a great extent and the upper
case to a lesser but still significant extent seem to
be as geometrical as any German sans, and since the
German designers all seem to have been strongly influenced
by Johnston, isn't it feasible to inquire that much
of the taxonomic discussion of sans has been obscured
by the extremely anti-German sentiments of Updike and
virtually all English writers of the period? If you can
turn a beloved German Shepherd into an Alsatian solely
because you wish to avoid the G-word, you certainly can
invent a misleading typographical taxonomy, and, given
the circumstances, it would only have been natural
to do so. But why should our arguments today be clouded
by the remnants of the hysterical chauvinism that
typified the first half of the 20th century in Europe
at this point in time?
Similarly, is it not possible that Johnston's achievement
is *not* the birth of the "humanist" sans, but, in fact,
the birth of the first major geometric sans? Perhaps,
by a very tight stretch of the imagination, one
can find a classical sensibility in text set in
Underground provided that the letters M and S are
not present. But the moment we start looking at
material set in the lower case, we are as firmly
removed from any classical sensibility as it is
possible to be. And once you remove the false
dichotomy of Underground/Gill as humanist vs.
Futura/Kabel/Erbar as geometric, it is possible
to see Johnston as the inspirer not merely of a
school of sans serif design that was never as
commercially successful as the German counterparts
but as the inspirer of all rational sans serif
design in the 20th century, a far more important
achievement.
Why have Gill and Underground had such limited
success compared to the German geometrics? Simply
because Gill and Underground, though infinitely
more beautiful than their counterparts, appeared
dated, mannered and quaint by comparison. But it hardly
detracts from their historical value, or their value
as utilizable artworks. I do not
think the German sans serifs could have existed
without the example of Underground. Indeed, when
you then further consider the influence of Johnston
and his students as calligraphers upon German
type, it would appear that his influence was
overwhelming *but this is a fact that no German
or Briton would have wished to acknowledge at the
time*. Who, then, would have cared to point out that
Johnston was influencing German type even more than
he might have been influencing British type?
Thus, the tremendous economic competition
between the German and British type industries, as well as
the supra nationalist tone of the age, and
wars, and the memory of wars, seem to have
engendered a public relations apparatus which
entirely obscured the true nature of the aesthetic
developments which were then taking place.
Type -- whether you consider it an art, or a craft,
or something else, must, like all arts and crafts,
reflect the economic and political forces that
are present when it is being created. And just as
importantly, those economic and political forces
colour the contemporaneous historical materials
that are our primary sources when we come in later
ages to examine that type from a historical perspective.
Hence it is imperative to realize that primary
sources are highly biased by the attitudes of the day.
And one could hardly look for a more passionate
and volatile period in European history than,
let us say, 1916 to 1939. It may also be argued
that these years saw the perfection of a
scientific propoganda apparatus whose ruthlessness
has hardly been exceeded since. Why should type
have been exempted from it?
I am sorry if I may seem to have wandered a little
far afield, but the inexplicable passions aroused by any
discussion of Johnston seem to show that there is
a complex matrix of problems present here.
Bill.
Andrew Stephenson
"HOLLYWOOD" sign in L.A.? (1) Members of a font? (2) Design
elements? (3) Regrettable mistake, resulting from vagueness when
placing the order with the type foundry?
--
Andrew Stephenson
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
Lo...@truetype.demon.co.uk (Laurence Penney) wrote:
>cl...@typonaut.demon.co.uk (Clive Bruton/Typonaut) wrote:
>
>>I cannot have a debate with anyone who starts with the premise that Gill
>>and Johnston ... are identical.
>
>Unless I misunderstood Bill, you're misrepresenting him.
Bill doesn't seem to think so;
"The basic look of the two typefaces is extremely close,
and it takes more than a second to tell which is which in signage."
>
>>There is to me as clear a distinction between Gill and Johnston as there is
>>between Gill and Frutiger, or to make it plainer Helvetica and Univers,
>>and, Futura and Avant Garde ...
>
>No two of these are identical - nor interchangeable, except in the rather
>uninteresting subjective sense.
In that case we agree.
>For me, Univers sits closer to Syntax, Meta and Frutiger than to its usual
>taxonomic associate, Helvetica.
Again it seems we must agree, my point was that all of these fonts share a
common core, yet all are easily distinguishable from each other.
.
>
>I'm not clear what your point is regarding the constructions of 17th
>century dilettantes.
That you can take the geometric argument to extremes, virtually any
typeface can be shown to have underlying geometric constuction
Tiro TypeWorks
>I disagree. Catich has rendered lower-case letters to accompany
>the Romans many, many times. I even have sets of 7" exemplars for
>them, and we've considered digitizing them as an accompaniment to
>Trajan. Also, many of the greatest type designs in existence (Goudy
>Old Style, Gill Sans) look utterly comfortable with their Roman-
>descended majuscules and Carolingian-descended minuscules. If you
>look too hard, you might sense something is amiss, but that is just
>your "Roman capitals" sensitivity fighting your "Carolingians"
>sensitivity. Look at the two together, leaving your left brain
>behind, and you see a nice synthesis.
I havn't looked closely at Father Catich's lower-case, but I will
certainly do so. Everything else you say, however, supports my
contention against Bill Troop: Gill Sans and Goudy Old Style work
precisely because the uppercase, while maintaining the sensibility of
the Roman inscriptional forms, has been modified exactly enough to sit
comfortably with the lowercase. Proportions have been modified, in the
case of Gill Sans, and Goudy OS is rich with stylistic forms which
lend resonance between upper- and lowercase.
Bill was arguing that Johnston and Gill did not follow Roman models,
because he saw too much evidence of 'geometric' forms in their sans
serif designs. I was arguing that they had followed classical models
but had, because they were good designers, modified the uppercase to
sit well with the lowercase. In Johnston this is only partly
successful, because of the weaknesses in the lowercase design; in Gill
it is almost entirely successful. In a private e-mail, which I invite
him to post here, Bill rails against the Johnston/Gill uppercase M,
which he says, quite rightly, shows little evidence of following a
classical model. In the same mail, however, he states:
Perhaps, by a very tight stretch of the imagination, one
can find a classical sensibility in text set in Underground
provided that the letters M and S are not present.
I would suggest to him that the stretch is not so tight, and that two
letters do not constitute a radical departure.
>>Try to find a sans serif in which underlying geometry isn't a trifle
>>obvious. If this newsgroup had a graphical interface I'd take the time
>>to demonstrate the underlying geometry of the letters on Trajan's
>>column.
>Only insofar as the line and the round are renderable by the human
>hand, and that the edged writing tool describes its ribbon effect.
>If you've ever tried to letter with a flat brush, especially Roman
>capitals, you know that your hand has to twist to get the pleasing
>entasis and ductus, and there's nothing less "geometric" than that
>unless you want to argue reductio ad absurdum.
Are you familiar with the humble, but excellent, book by L.C. Evetts
'Roman Lettering'? Note that I refer to 'underlying' geometry. Evetts
demonstrates very clearly that the stylistic shapes of the Trajan
capitals (entasis, ductus, etc.) are applied on top of a brilliant
system of geometric proportions. The brilliance of this is that the
geometry is a function of the form, rather than the other way round
(which is the case with the worst sans serif designs). This in no way
contradicts Father Catich's findings re. the flat brush, but shows how
the proportions of each letter are directly related to the width of
stroke obtained when the brush is held at an angle appropriate to its
principal stems.
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
<bilt...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Why have Gill and Underground had such limited
> success compared to the German geometrics?
Bill, this is a joke, right?
You're not really suggesting that Futura is a more widely used font (as
this is the only really successfuly German geometric) than Gill?
A glance at virtually any typeshop's sales chart would show otherwise.
Clive Bruton (AKA The Typonaut)
cl...@typonaut.demon.co.uk (new mail address!)
Christopher Fynn
bilt...@ix.netcom.com "Bill Troop" writes:
...
> Why have Gill and Underground had such limited
> success compared to the German geometrics?
...
Could this have something to do with the fact
that Johnson Underground was not released as
a commercial typeface and that Monotype did
not release Gill Sans in the US market for
many years?
- Chris
w...@world.std.com
Andrew Stephenson <am...@deltrak.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> How would one classify the individual characters of the famous
> "HOLLYWOOD" sign in L.A.?
Since the sign originally said "HOLLYWOODLAND", which had 13 letters, from
which a despondent actress-wannabe leaped to her death,
it was already classified by the builders as
> (3) Regrettable mistake
when they decided not to repair the final 4 letters when they last
collapsed.
Seriously, they certainly are design elements at that size.
Whenever you're working at a size where manual optical spacing of individual
letters is required -- typical for all caps dispaly matter in A N Y size --
then the individual glyphs are design elements as well as sorts in a font.
If you're doing DADA style "typography", they're all design elements.
If you're designing books or interior pages of respectable periodicals,
via the Crystal Goblet theory, they're just sorts.
I'd need to look very closesly to see if they were in a font or not.
Probably they were adapted from Velvetica Overused or Franklin Gothic, but
it could be almost any Armpit Gothic. (Kibo could tell us, but he fell of
the net, and _I'm_ _not_ going dignify that monument to stupidity by
comparing the 1920's 13-char photo against Rookledges.)
If all the 'L's were identical within tolerance (warpage of wood == squish
of ink) and all the O's (and the original second D), then they are also
sorts from a font, whether it ever had other characters (besides the old
AN). If each was free-handed such that the putative font has as many
variant O's as you need O's, then you are back to the scribal/xylographic
tradition and are _not_ using fonted sorts.
--
Bill Ricker, The Swamp-Castle Press "The freedom of the press belongs
w...@world.std.com N1VUX to those who own one."--A.J.Lieberman
Bill Troop
>In article <49cqag$o...@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, Bill Troop
><bilt...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> success compared to the German geometrics?
>
>
>You're not really suggesting that Futura is a more widely used font (as
>this is the only really successfuly German geometric) than Gill?
>
>A glance at virtually any typeshop's sales chart would show otherwise.
>
you will forgive me, of the pre-PostScript eras.
I was also thinking not only of Futura though,
as I should have made clear, but of the neo-
grotesques including, however you want to
classify it, Univers, which was surely the
dominant sans of the late 50s. Tracy calls
them all 'industrial'and makes clear that
historically, Gill was not popular outside England.
' [It] ... actually achieved a world
wide reputation, if not popularity' are his
words. And:
'It was much admired in Britain, partly because
of the interesting people involved in its creation
... and Beatrice Warde, who publicised the
type (and the people) so skilfully. It may be,
too, that the traditionalist strain in the
British character responded to the type's air
of academic probity and did not object to the
slightly mannered effect it presented in type
composition. Gill Sans meant nothing to
American typographers, and very little to
European ones -- a state of affairs which
Monotype tried to remedy by [as I have already
quoted] ... [enabling] ... the type to be converted
into a close imitation of Futura which was then
the chief representative of the other species of
sans serif then current.'
Neither Gill nor of course Underground could
possibly be called economical types by
today's standards, and though I am always
happy to see Gill used in advertising, I
see it very little indeed, still, today,
as compared to other sanses.
Harry Dodsworth
If you can't buy the Underground font, why not buy a train!
From: H.Pa...@cm-net.co.uk (Harry Parkes)
Newsgroups: misc.transport.rail.europe
Subject: Announce: London Underground Signs and Assorted Ephemera
Reply-To: H.Pa...@cm-net.co.uk
Date: Wed Nov 29 08:45:51 1995
Brooks Auctioneers are holding an auction for the London
Underground of signs and assorted ephemera. From station signs to a
four carriage train in working order.
The ideal Christmas stocking filler for the rail enthusiast.
The catalogue - among many others - and auction details can be
found on Auctions On-Line ( http://www.auctions-on-line.com ).
Regards, Harry
Harry Dodsworth, Ottawa Ontario af...@freenet.carleton.ca
----------------------------------------------------------
Tiro TypeWorks
I've selected this paragraph from Bill's post as being the one which I
can reply to most succinctly. After all, I had said I was withdrawing
from this discussion.
In the first place, as Christopher has pointed out, Johnston Sans
could hardly have competed well commercially because it was not
commercially available. As Clive has pointed out, it is ludicrous to
say that Gill has not done as well commercially as the German
geometrics. Tracy, in pointing out the 'geometric' Gill drawn at the
Monotype works to entice an American audience, is referring to a very
particular instance in history when Modernism was first taking root in
New York. In the longer history of Gill and Futura (which, as Clive
notes is the only historically successful German geometric), the
former face has proven far more popular in both English and North
American markets.
I might well agree with Bill that the discrepancy between geometric
and humanist sans serifs is largely artificial, but I wholly disagree
with his thesis that Johnston Sans sparked the German geometric model.
As I have said elsewhere in this thread, the geometry of any sans
serif, no matter how 'humanist' will be more obvious than in a
similarly proportioned serif face. In this respect, all sans serifs
may be considered geometric. By way of example, David Quay's Foundry
Sans appears to have a very simple, elegant geometry, but it is also
clearly a humanist design: its forms were drawn over projections of
Stempel Garamond!
I recommend to Bill's attention, and to anyone else who may be
interested in this matter, the uppercase sans serif design that
appears in the Caslon specimen book of 1816 (yes, eighteen, not
nineteen). This is widely credited with being the first sans serif
typeface, although the wording in the face's description suggests that
it was a form which was already accepted as 'the most modern job
letter'. I suspect that the style may first have appeared in sign
writing of the period. The Caslon sans is rather ungainly but it is,
despite its flaws, undeniably geometric.
As regards Bill's contention that 'the German sans serifs could have
existed without the example of Underground' (ie. Johnston Sans), this
is patent nonsense. If any English influence can be ascribed to the
German development, it is that of the original Caslon sans. Sans serif
types are recorded in popular use in Germany, complete with lowercase
letters, in the 1830s. There is no reason to suppose that later German
type designers (such as Renner), though they may well have been
familiar with Johnston's work, were not capable of developing from
their own sans serif tradition.
Since Bill insists that 'all arts and crafts, reflect the economic and
political forces that are present when it is being created' (I had no
idea he was such a devout Marxist), we should re-attach the German
geometric designs to the Modernist movement, of which they formed an
important expression, and which Bill has chosen to ignore completely.
Johnston Sans may be considered one of the last expressions of the
Arts and Crafts movement; Futura is the essential Modernist type face.
The difference in their origins is clearly reflected in their
different styles, despite the fact that, to someone who claims not to
be able to tell Johnston and Gill apart, they may both appear
'geometric' compared to, say, Nicholas Cochin.
Bill Troop
provocative and, if you will permit me to say, much better
reasoned than your previous writings on the subject
and that being so *I* am now content to let the
matter rest, especially as I am quite prepared to
admit that I know nothing about the subject and
am therefore in constant fear of saying something that
is not merely outrageous, but idiotic as well.
I had not thought of Johnston as
being the final representation of the Arts &
Crafts Movement--that is an interesting way of
looking at it. I am not completely persuaded,
however.
I am certainly not a Marxist; if anything I am a
bad Nietzschean and a worse Stassinapolophilian.
I had, for the moment, forgotten about the Caslon
Sans, though I know it perfectly well through
the specimen and through Mosley's digitization.
I am inclined to think, though,
that Renner, Koch and Erbar were more likely
to be familiar with Johnston and his work than
with 19th century sans faces. The historical
material that existed is irrelevant if nobody
was aware of it, or if they didn't consider
it important. Moreover, at any time from,
let us say, the Golden Type to 1930, it would
have been to England that designers from
other countries looked for typographical
inspiration.
Finally, the problem with Underground as the final
flower of Art & Crafts, and Futura as the first
blossom of modernism, is that their forms are too
close to justify such a really drastic theory of divergence if
you are basing your theory *only* on the forms of the letters.
When you consider that both these schools of type
are judged hopelessly old fashioned by the
modernists of the 1950s until the present, who
would call the 'industrial' types the truly modern
types, and when you further consider that the
'industrial' types were to all intents and purposes
already in existence at some point between
1850 and 1910, then it becomes clear that the
way in which you characterize a sans serif type is
based less on its observable formal structure, and
more on the use for which it is intended: the
industrials were considered vulgar by good
typographers when they were created; a hundred
years later they were the height of reasoned
contempoary taste. But the *letters* were the
same! (Or nearly so.) As to legibility and
economy, both of which, astonishingly,
have been mentioned in this thread in connection
with Gill and Underground, neither could possibly
be considered legible or economical by today's
standards. If the tremendous progress made in
sans serif design from 1950 until the present has
shown anything, it is that any of the different
styles of sans -- 'humanist', 'geometric', or
'industrial' -- can be refined by gifted designers
to ever increasing standards of legibility and
economy. Rossum's Advert is, I think, a fascinating
summa in what is being achieved today. Needless
to say, one can easily choose an older, less
legible type anytime one wants -- for its stylistic
resonance, real, or imagined. But I do wonder
how long Microsoft will use Gill Sans . . . .
By the way, *is* New Johnston commercially
available and usable? And if so from whom?
Or is the Banks and Miles design still
restricted? Bill.
Peter Zelchenko
Andrew Stephenson <am...@deltrak.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>How would one classify the individual characters of the famous
>elements? (3) Regrettable mistake, resulting from vagueness when
>placing the order with the type foundry?
It's not a font, and it's not type. It's one-off, hand-scribed signage.
It probably doesn't derive from any particular samples. It could well
be straight from pencil sketches of a signmaker with no visual reference.
Peter Zelchenko
Tiro TypeWorks <ti...@portal.ca> wrote:
>>>Try to find a sans serif in which underlying geometry isn't a trifle
>>>obvious. If this newsgroup had a graphical interface I'd take the time
>>>to demonstrate the underlying geometry of the letters on Trajan's
>>>column.
>
>>hand, and that the edged writing tool describes its ribbon effect.
>>If you've ever tried to letter with a flat brush, especially Roman
>>capitals, you know that your hand has to twist to get the pleasing
>>entasis and ductus, and there's nothing less "geometric" than that
>>unless you want to argue reductio ad absurdum.
>
>Are you familiar with the humble, but excellent, book by L.C. Evetts
>'Roman Lettering'? Note that I refer to 'underlying' geometry. Evetts
>demonstrates very clearly that the stylistic shapes of the Trajan
>capitals (entasis, ductus, etc.) are applied on top of a brilliant
>system of geometric proportions. The brilliance of this is that the
>geometry is a function of the form, rather than the other way round
>(which is the case with the worst sans serif designs). This in no way
>contradicts Father Catich's findings re. the flat brush, but shows how
>the proportions of each letter are directly related to the width of
>stroke obtained when the brush is held at an angle appropriate to its
>principal stems.
Evetts' book completely contradicts Catich's thesis. Evetts describes
Roman letters as having been built with geometric tools.
"Quite distinct, however, from the abruptness of pen-made curves,
the change from thick to thin portions in all the round letters
is exceedingly subtle, and peculiar in design to tools which produce
letters of built-up character.
"The chief difference between inscriptional characters and MS.
letters lies in the fact that the stone-cut forms are...built up,
part at a time, and not made by single sweeping strokes of a pen
or brush."
[L.C. Evetts, A.R.C.A., _Roman Lettering_, p. 13, quoted in Catich, p. 53]
Catich, in response, roundly (and squarely) refutes Evetts' argument.
That there is a fundamental proportion to every letter's structure, or
at least a reasonable range for any form, few people disagree.
Clive Bruton/Typonaut
a fundamental difference of opinion. Which despite much learned debate
seems deadlocked.
I'd just like to make a few parting remarks:-)
Bill on whether Gill was/has been a succesful typeface:
>It is not a joke, but I was thinking mainly, if
>you will forgive me, of the pre-PostScript eras.
I think we can only really judge the success of a typeface outside our own
historical context, so in that sense, looking back we can see that Gill
wasn't the most popular font in the world. However it is clearly shown that
Gill is a very popluar font in todays market, and I believe it will
continue that way.
Perhaps Gill suffered in its earlier life from its tethering to certain
proprietry systems.
In historical context it can be clearly shown that virtually all typeface
design had a very limited audience during the designers lifetime, the 20th
century has probably been an exception to that rule.
>I was also thinking not only of Futura though,
>as I should have made clear, but of the neo-
>grotesques including, however you want to classify it, Univers, which was
>surely the dominant sans of the late 50s.
I can no more understand a link between Futura and Univers than Cooper
Black and Bembo. I think John Hudson has covered this ground to its full
extent, the three different "flavours" of sans come from completely
different backgrounds and influences.
The common denominator, for Gill and Univers, is that they are the
influence for the later humanist sans movement.
>...into a close imitation of Futura which was then
>the chief representative of the other species of
>sans serif then current.'
I think this too has been well covered, the only surviving version of Gill
is that used in the UK from its first release, this now has a world wide
popularity. Any misdemeanors carried out by sales and marketing departments
should be left to lie in historic obscurity as they deserve.
>...and though I am always
>happy to see Gill used in advertising, I
>see it very little indeed, still, today,
>as compared to other sanses.
I beg to differ again, if I remember correctly, within the last six months
there was a thread on the subject of the "new popularity of Gill", I think
that the correct conclusion of that thread was reached. Gill has always
been a popular face, sometimes it is more fashionable than others, but it
is always there if you have an eye to look.
I do still feel that somehow I'm defending the honour of the British Empire
here, but as a socialist and a Europhile (complete with monetary union), I
know that *cannot* be the case. :-)
As for there being any British-German bad feeling in the past, perhaps that
is inevitable, as we were doing our best to raze each others cities, I
completely reject that is the case today.
Tiro TypeWorks
>Evetts' book completely contradicts Catich's thesis. Evetts describes
>Roman letters as having been built with geometric tools.
> "Quite distinct, however, from the abruptness of pen-made curves,
> the change from thick to thin portions in all the round letters
> is exceedingly subtle, and peculiar in design to tools which produce
> letters of built-up character.
> "The chief difference between inscriptional characters and MS.
> letters lies in the fact that the stone-cut forms are...built up,
> part at a time, and not made by single sweeping strokes of a pen
> or brush."
>[L.C. Evetts, A.R.C.A., _Roman Lettering_, p. 13, quoted in Catich, p. 53]
>Catich, in response, roundly (and squarely) refutes Evetts' argument.
>That there is a fundamental proportion to every letter's structure, or
>at least a reasonable range for any form, few people disagree.
It's this last point that I was making reference to in my original
suggestion of 'underlying geometry', and as you say few people
disagree. With regard to the Evett/Catich disagreement, it seems more
unfortunate that illuminating. Evett was wrong on insisting on the
'built up' nature of the Trajan letters in his text, but it is his
diagrams that interest me most. He assumed that because the letters
could be built up, then they must have been so. A practiced and
informed lettering artist could have achieved the same proportions
with a number of different tools, flat brush being one of the most
likely. Fr Catich had the advantage of practical brush lettering
experience, while I suspect Evett was a draughtsman by both occupation
and inclination. Evetts diagrams of the proportional systems of the
Trajan letters remain the best I have seen, and, ironically, the some
of the most sensitive to calligraphic features such as entassis.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
> Bill Troop <bilt...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> I am certainly not a Marxist; if anything I am a
>> bad Nietzschean...
>
> Is there any other kind of Nietzschean?
No. There are good Nietzscheans, and then there are Nietzscheans
who are beyond good and evil.
It's always Dark. Light only hides the Darkness.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan (619) 535 - 0546
atha...@UCSD.edu 132.239.147.2 <75013,676>
Tiro TypeWorks
>I am certainly not a Marxist; if anything I am a
>bad Nietzschean...
Is there any other kind of Nietzschean?
JH
Peter Zelchenko
Tiro TypeWorks <ti...@portal.ca> wrote:
>pe...@chinet.chinet.com (Peter Zelchenko) wrote:
>>Catich, in response, roundly (and squarely) refutes Evetts' argument.
>>That there is a fundamental proportion to every letter's structure, or
>>at least a reasonable range for any form, few people disagree.
>
>It's this last point that I was making reference to in my original
>suggestion of 'underlying geometry', and as you say few people
>disagree. With regard to the Evett/Catich disagreement, it seems more
>unfortunate that illuminating. Evett was wrong on insisting on the
>'built up' nature of the Trajan letters in his text, but it is his
>diagrams that interest me most. He assumed that because the letters
>could be built up, then they must have been so. A practiced and
>informed lettering artist could have achieved the same proportions
>with a number of different tools, flat brush being one of the most
>likely. Fr Catich had the advantage of practical brush lettering
>experience, while I suspect Evett was a draughtsman by both occupation
>and inclination. Evetts diagrams of the proportional systems of the
>Trajan letters remain the best I have seen, and, ironically, the some
>of the most sensitive to calligraphic features such as entassis.
I learned lettering first with a ruler, then with an edged pen, then
finally with pointed and edged brush. In the first phase, I either
assumed most or all letters were built up, or else got very confused
when looking at a letter. Soon after, I started playing with an
edged pen and only at that time did I realize how calligraphy
really was done. But brush writing still confused me. I thought
it must have been done with a pen. Finally, when I started using a
brush, it all became clear to me. This must be how the Renaissance
masters must have felt when confronted with textura MSs (they
instinctively tried drawing them with a pointed quill), and how
Evetts may have felt when looking at Roman inscriptions -- in fact,
how everyone must have felt until Catich cleared it all up!
Andrew Stephenson
> Bill Troop <bilt...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >I am certainly not a Marxist; if anything I am a
> >bad Nietzschean...
>
> Is there any other kind of Nietzschean?
We-e-ell, there are _dead_ ones... <g>
--
Andrew Stephenson