- 47 minutes ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:09There are strange types in Britain that follow you around wherever you go.
00:18Telling you what to eat, what to drink, what to see and where to go.
00:27These types are so ubiquitous they're almost invisible.
00:33We don't even notice that they are there.
00:37And yet they are alongside us.
00:42In the background and the foreground of everything we do, every single day.
00:49Please tell us why you had to hide away for so long.
00:55Creating a backdrop to Britain for the past century.
01:00They are, of course, typefaces.
01:02The way in which we read a word on a shop front, a sign, a newspaper or a screen.
01:08And two types in particular are so fundamentally British.
01:13You're so used to them that you haven't even noticed them all around you.
01:19They are Johnston and Gil Sands.
01:25In this program we will reveal how these typefaces have been scripting our lives for decades.
01:33Created by two unlikely and influential characters.
01:39One of whom had his reputation overshadowed by disturbing revelations about his personal life.
01:46This is the story of Edward Johnston and Eric Gill and their two types of Britain.
02:02Words are all around us, everywhere we turn, guiding us, informing us and tempting us.
02:10But every word surrounding us is in a typeface.
02:24I'm Mark Ovenden and you might say I'm a bit of a typeface enthusiast.
02:29Yes, they really do exist.
02:31And why not?
02:32Typefaces are so important and shape the way we see the world.
02:37Something I've always found fascinating.
02:44Typefaces nowadays are usually and wrongly referred to as fonts.
02:49A font actually depicts the size and weight of letters.
02:52Whereas the typeface is the important bit.
02:55Letter design.
02:58Choosing the right typeface for text is more important than you might think.
03:03Because how lettering looks conveys the emotion of the word.
03:10Imagine how differently we might perceive all sorts of important messages and brands if they were in the wrong typeface.
03:25As we rumble around on public transport, we're constantly bombarded by messages for products or services.
03:33But how can we differentiate between the crucial signs that tell us where to get off the train or where
03:40to go on holiday?
03:41We may think that we're quite sophisticated, but actually how we spot the difference is the result of good design
03:48and really clever typography.
03:51But it wasn't always like that.
03:55In the early 1900s, London and its traffic were growing at an alarming rate.
04:05To counter this problem, the underground was expanding with new tunnels deep below the West End.
04:13And extended lines reaching further out to the suburbs.
04:20Paid advertising on the tube station walls was nothing new and a useful source of additional income.
04:29But it was all becoming a bit chaotic.
04:34Enamel and hand painted signs and fly posting were the equivalent of today's website pop-ups or endless advert breaks
04:42on the telly.
04:43And at railway stations, especially those of the underground, these ads littered every available wall.
04:51The underground was already in the midst of a redesign.
04:56Architect Leslie Green had created an arts and crafts inspired decorative feel to many of the new stations in 1906.
05:07But this had not solved the signage and advertising confusion.
05:12Much of this work is still visible and has also been preserved in pristine condition in now unused parts of
05:20the underground.
05:21Well, Mike, it's great to be down in these abandoned tunnels underneath Piccadilly Circus.
05:26Can you tell us something about the signage we can still see here?
05:29Indeed, what you're looking at here is signage that dates from the opening of this station in 1906 when the
05:34Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines opened here.
05:36And, of course, this is one of the traditional ceramic leather tiling in this slightly serif typeface design by Leslie
05:44Green, the architect who built these stations.
05:46But, of course, it's really very contemporary of that period. It's a slightly soft arts and crafts typeface.
05:52These little arrows particularly are probably the giveaway in some respects.
05:57A serif is a small flourish at the end of a letter, rather like the stroke of a brush.
06:04The underground was using this style of serif lettering on much of the railway signage.
06:11But a typeface which was different at every station didn't make the network look unified.
06:18They were obviously trying a simple, similar style of lettering, but didn't quite manage actually to get consistency across their
06:27stations.
06:27And I think that was due to the fact that several different manufacturers made these ceramic tiles, so I think
06:33there was a subtle variation.
06:34But they're simple, the way they're laid out and the use of the lettering on them, that actually allows a
06:40consistency of approach and legibility, and at the same time subliminally delivering the brand.
06:47Frank Picc was in charge of publicity for the London Underground Group at this time.
06:54After years of signs being made in a variety of serifs and sans serifs by the many companies running services,
07:01he realised that customers could not clearly differentiate between the station signage and adverts for other companies, as it was
07:09all in this chaotic mix of styles.
07:14Frank Picc intended to change this.
07:19Frank Picc began to commission scores of commercial artists, what we would now call graphic designers, to come up with
07:26posters to extol the virtues of using the tube in off-peak times, to explore London's edges, or to come
07:34into the West End for their shopping.
07:35Frank Picc, but he knew that he wanted the lettering to be really distinctive, to stand out from the graphic
07:43noise of all the advertising, to be straightforward, clear, and in his words, manly.
07:54A lot of the designs, specifically on the advertising posters that were commissioned early on, were beginning to stand out
08:01in this style.
08:04One from 1908 highlights much of Frank Picc's vision.
08:09A bright, confident poster, showcasing all the essential elements of taking the underground.
08:16Here you have those red brick tiles of Leslie Green, the underground logo with the large U and the big
08:22D.
08:23There's even a silhouette of London in there and the map and a couple of catchphrases.
08:27But the problem was, all the lettering was different, it just didn't look like a unified organisation.
08:35However, everything was about to change.
08:39Because a lot of the stations were styled by this arts and crafts based design, much of the typography used
08:45at the stations, and by advertisers of the day, were in a serif.
08:51Frank Picc had the idea to radically change the lettering to a sans serif, which meant removing the decorative kicks
08:58from the characters.
09:00He wanted a typeface that would be instantly associated with the underground, wherever it appeared.
09:06So every time you saw it, you knew where you were.
09:11Since the sans serif he envisaged did not exist at that time, he had no option.
09:16He would have to commission one for himself.
09:22Luckily for Picc, London was buzzing with creativity in the early 1900s.
09:27And a young man whose passion was the ancient art of calligraphy was about to catch his eye.
09:33His name? Edward Johnston.
09:37At this time, Johnston was lecturing calligraphy at Central School of Art and Design in London.
09:43Kathleen, what was Johnston's lecturing style like?
09:47By all accounts, he was a real showman.
09:50We have a set of photographs taken by one of his students that just shows his blackboards absolutely packed full
09:56of kind of letter forms and different styles of letters, some really quite flamboyant and exuberant ones.
10:02So you just kind of get a sense of the richness of what it must have been to have been
10:05a part of those classes, yeah.
10:08Edward Johnston was also known in the arts and crafts circuit.
10:12And it was here where he met Frank Picc, who was fascinated by his work.
10:19Given that he was a calligrapher, there was quite an odd choice for Frank Picc to choose him, really, wasn't
10:24it, for this modern sans serif he wanted?
10:26I do wonder whether or not Picc took a punt on Johnston.
10:29I mean, he was an odd choice. He was embarking on something new.
10:32He wasn't an expert.
10:34He was just opening out a territory.
10:37And I've always thought that was interesting that he got a job as the head of something and he wasn't
10:40sort of known for it.
10:41He wasn't really established when he got that job.
10:43So I think it was more just maybe a sense of excitement and buzz and maybe Picc just thought, well,
10:49I wonder what he's going to bring to this job.
10:54Johnston's alphabet design for London Transport was an anomaly, a complete contradiction to much of his teachings.
11:02Here was a calligrapher who taught his students by chalks, quill and ink, producing this radically neat style of block
11:10letters without serifs.
11:13But he still managed to encapsulate some sneakily placed calligraphic touches to many of the letters.
11:20When you have a broad edge pen and you go to draw a dot of an eye and of course
11:25it ends up as a diamond shape, there's your comma.
11:29So the punctuation, the tittle as we call them, was really formed from Johnson's background as a calligrapher.
11:37Yeah, absolutely. His knowledge of a pen and the tool and actually how you start to shape letters.
11:41And it still is what gives Johnston Sands a real distinctiveness.
11:46So the way Johnson was doing it with a couple of chalks glued together is still relevant to type designers
11:53today.
11:53Yeah, absolutely. But not just type designers. I mean, I'd say anybody that's working with typefaces and who isn't.
11:59We're all using fonts on our computers every day. It's just the most easy way to demonstrate the relationship between
12:05tool and letter form.
12:07Students can identify straight away with it. Also, you can rub it out.
12:16From 1916, Edward Johnston's new and very different lettering was adopted for publicity material across the London Underground.
12:26It wasn't the first sans serif invented during this time, but it was the first to base its letters on
12:32Roman square proportions,
12:34focusing on the narrow width of the strokes.
12:38A feeling of progress was in the air. A desire to clear up the mess of the past and build
12:44a brave new world.
12:46Unification of London's transport system was already well on the way.
12:49In 1916, a man named Frank Pick, on behalf of the new Underground Railway Group,
12:56had commissioned a new sans serif typeface from one of Britain's leading typographers, Edward Johnston.
13:02The result is the clear, bold Johnston lettering that graces London's transport system.
13:07A truly 20th century achievement.
13:10The modern concept of intellectual property did not exist during this period,
13:16but the design was fiercely guarded by London Transport.
13:20So much so, printers who had access to the type blocks were forbidden to use them on anything else.
13:27The typeface was a complete success, but it wasn't exactly a life-changing experience for Edward Johnston.
13:35After Johnston had delivered his first alphabets to Frank Pick,
13:39he just carried on working at Central School.
13:40He didn't really work on any other typefaces, did he?
13:43I don't think he set out to be a great type designer,
13:45and I don't think he set out to be famous or to achieve in that kind of way.
13:50He was just really happy with his ideas, with finding out and studying lettering.
13:57Such was the success of the lettering for the Underground,
14:00Johnston later went on to design a condensed version of his typeface
14:04for the bus destination boards as well.
14:08But with this new unified brand spreading across London,
14:13Pick needed assurance that no one would deviate from it.
14:17What was needed was some kind of easy-to-follow instruction book
14:21that everybody could copy.
14:23And that's exactly what London Transport did in 1938,
14:27with the standard signs manual.
14:30The first time corporate identity manual has ever been created
14:34for any transport organisation in the world.
14:37And here we have all the elements of what should exist on a sign.
14:42Here's the logo at the top, underneath all the station names.
14:46Even including what colour each of the lines would be in.
14:51Thanks to Frank Pick's vision and Edward Johnston's style,
14:56Transport in London now had its own brand.
14:59The signage stood out from the rest of the graphic noise
15:03to form a clear and concise way-finding system,
15:07making it a lot easier to get out.
15:19Johnston's creation defined London Transport.
15:23Everywhere you looked, Johnston was looking back at you.
15:27So no matter whether your journey was from Ongar to Kilburn,
15:32you would know that the whole way would be guided
15:36by this beautiful, aesthetically pleasing Johnston typeface.
15:42London Transport jealously guarded Johnston's creation in its entirety,
15:47which meant London was exactly where it would stay.
15:54Johnston himself left the big smoke to work out of the small East Sussex village of Ditchling,
15:59where there is a museum showcasing much of his work.
16:06I've seen London Transport posters my whole life and admired the lettering.
16:10But this is the first time I've ever held some of the lowercase wooden letters.
16:16And it's just fantastic to see the calligraphic influences that are brought out by some of these letters.
16:22Just look at that big swish underneath the comma.
16:26And the tittle, the dot above the I.
16:29Johnston's absolutely famous diamond.
16:32And this double storey or I glass G.
16:35The attention to detail, the balance that he managed to eventually work
16:40into the proportions of that G are just beautiful.
16:47This different and calligraphy inspired design changed the way London looked forever.
16:53But where did Johnston's vision and ideas come from?
16:58To find out, I've come to meet his grandson Andrew,
17:02to examine Edward Johnston's beginnings.
17:05He had a very strange start in life.
17:08He was born in 1872 on a ranch in Uruguay.
17:12It was quite an unconventional sort of childhood.
17:15His father was quite a strange figure.
17:17He was from this deeply religious family,
17:21but he corresponded with Darwin.
17:23He had quite sort of revolutionary ideas that children should do what they want.
17:28The result was Edward was mainly brought up by his aunt,
17:32who was very sweet but terribly neurotic and worried all the time about him catching cold
17:37and so kept him basically indoors.
17:39And his father kept him uneducated for most of his childhood life really.
17:46You would not think that going to a calligrapher, sitting at this desk, using a quill pen,
17:53how is he going to give you one of the world's best known typefaces?
17:58A most unlikely figure to then become a modern graphic designer.
18:02The very way the word is written is like the familiar voice of a friend.
18:06The look of London Transport is its personality.
18:09The triumphant unified design that Johnston had transported to tubes, trams and buses
18:16wasn't just in the typeface.
18:19Frank Pick later asked him to redesign the underground logo, known as the Bullseye or Roundel.
18:26After the success of the underground type, I think Pick saw that he could do other work for it.
18:32One thing that he looked at was the Bullseye, as it was called, the solid red disc
18:37with some rather clunky sans-serif lettering across it on a bar.
18:41Not an easy commission and Pick was not an easy man to deal with,
18:45but he did succeed in producing something that Pick liked,
18:49which was to hollow out the solid disc into a ring,
18:52placed the lettering on a very carefully proportioned bar,
18:56put ribbons above the lettering and below the lettering,
18:58with a big U and a big D, and you got a balanced logo,
19:02that still survives to this day, really, in modified form,
19:07and was a runaway success.
19:10Johnston's designs and masterful teaching methods
19:13were inspirational to many of his students.
19:17It was in the classes at Central Saint Martins
19:20where a young architect turned stone-cutter named Eric Gill
19:24first fell under Johnston's spell.
19:33Eric Gill was well-known in art circles
19:36for much of his sketches and stone carvings.
19:41His early works had gained a lot of attention
19:43for the manner in which they contain both religious and sexual connotations.
19:54Gill attended evening classes at Central Saint Martins College in London
19:58to learn another art form, calligraphy.
20:04He became transfixed by his lecturer Edward Johnston,
20:07and had even assisted him on his commission for the underground.
20:14Gill remained inspired by Johnston's success,
20:18and began experimenting to create his own sans-serif alphabet.
20:22A friend asked him to paint a sign for a Bristol bookshop.
20:26This would effectively be the first major exposure of a new style
20:32that had never been seen outside of London.
20:38Historically, printing words in books and newspapers was a skilled craft.
20:44Typesetters assembled text by hand from individual wooden or metal letters.
20:49But in the late 1800s, a mechanical method called casting was invented
20:55that punched out the tiny letters from strips of metal.
21:02One of the key companies revolutionising this trade was called Monotype,
21:07based in Red Hill in Surrey.
21:09To make larger, display-sized headlines for posters and adverts,
21:14they created the Supercaster, which could automatically compile letters
21:19into whole sentences from molten metal.
21:24Monotype commissioned type designers to make alphabets for their machines,
21:28then licensed the rights to use them.
21:32So, every time a company used one of their typefaces on adverts or signs,
21:38Monotype would be paid a fee.
21:40But they were on the lookout for something new and exciting
21:43with a slightly Art Deco feel.
21:46And they were about to find it.
21:52Gil's new lettering was spotted on the bookshop sign
21:55by a consultant called Stanley Morrison, who was working for Monotype.
22:00He was keen to commission something in this style
22:03that the corporation could licence.
22:05It was the dawn of Gil's new typeface that would alter the way Britain looked forever.
22:13Not bad.
22:16When working on early designs for London Underground,
22:19Johnston was aided by his student Eric Gil,
22:23famously handing him 10% of the fee for his assistance.
22:27Gil's experimental design on the Cleaverdom bookstore
22:30adopted a Johnston-inspired sans serif.
22:35He worked fast on his new commission
22:37and transposed the letters he had prepared for the shop,
22:40turning them into a fully formed alphabet.
22:44But he didn't give Johnston a penny.
22:48Here it is.
22:49This delicate piece of brown paper lives here in London's St Bride printing library,
22:56hand inked by Gil himself,
22:59which shows just how revolutionary,
23:02radically clean and light his typeface was going to be
23:06compared to the old fussy serifs of the past.
23:11All Gil and Monotype needed now was a customer.
23:15A big customer.
23:19By chance, the London Northeastern Railway,
23:22who were then the second largest train company in Britain,
23:25were looking to rebrand.
23:29Cecil Dandridge, the LNER advertising manager,
23:32had seen how the radical sans serif design
23:35had brought clarity and authority to the London transport system.
23:40He quickly ordered the Johnston-inspired lettering of Gil Sands from Monotype
23:45to use across the entire LNER network,
23:50including one of their most iconic locomotives,
23:54the Mallard.
23:57By the middle of the 1930s,
24:00the LNER had used Gil Sands typeface on every conceivable surface.
24:05And when this magnificent blue beast broke the world speed record in 1938,
24:11pictures of its nameplate in Gil Sands lettering went around the world.
24:20Gil must have been thrilled that his typeface now donned the Mallard locomotive.
24:25As a reward for the success of his work,
24:29Cecil Dandridge invited Gil aboard one of their other famous trains,
24:33the Flying Scotsman.
24:37Unlike Johnston, who had inspired his design,
24:40Gil's lettering escaped the confines of London.
24:46It's thanks to the railways that this beautifully balanced sans serif typeface
24:52got transported to every single corner of Britain,
24:56from Land's End to John O'Groats.
24:58Well, more accurately, from Penzance to Wick, where the railways ran.
25:05It wasn't just the station's signs that extolled this new design.
25:10Timetables, information posters,
25:12even the dining car menu were all printed in Gil's radical typeface.
25:20The LNER effectively popularised Gil Sands in Britain,
25:24forcing all the printing companies who work for them to buy the typeface in.
25:29And once they had it, they used it for everything else.
25:33Gil Sands were sleek, modern, streamlined,
25:37just like the record-breaking Mallard.
25:39They were a perfect match.
25:42Other mainline train companies attempted to emulate the success of the LNER,
25:46the car's brave and smart new look,
25:48adopting Gil Sands for some of their advertising too.
25:54This made it the go-to typeface for many printing companies across the country.
26:03Well, turned out not too bad, really.
26:05Just look at this.
26:06It really shows the clarity of Gil's thinking in the design of this typeface.
26:12Look at that perfectly circular O,
26:14and the sloping edge of the T, a very distinctive feature of Gil Sands.
26:20A clearness and clarity of a sans-serif like this
26:23had never really been seen outside of London.
26:26But how exactly did Gil's new countrywide design differ from Johnston's London-based one?
26:34Gil famously said that he thought that his alphabet improved upon his masters,
26:38so it's interesting to compare the two.
26:41This is Johnston's capital R, supported by a completely straight leg,
26:46almost like a piece of furniture holding up the bowl.
26:49On Gil's R, it's propped up by this wonderfully graceful sprung tail,
26:55inspired by Roman and Trajan lettering.
26:58I wonder whether maybe Gil has the edge on this letter.
27:04Looking at the Gil Sands alphabet next to the Johnston one,
27:08the untrained eye could easily mistake them as the same typeface.
27:12However, they are anything but.
27:15Gil used a lot of symmetry on his letters and numerals,
27:19like this perfectly balanced 3,
27:22which could almost be an 8, chopped in half.
27:26Johnston's capital E's and F's have a much shorter middle crossbar,
27:31whereas Gil has them parallel with the top of the letter.
27:35It was exactly the straightforward clarity Monotype were looking for.
27:40They were so pleased with Gil's design,
27:42they ordered alternate weights and improvements to it.
27:48He went on to create several other typefaces too,
27:52although they weren't anywhere near as successful as Gil Sands.
27:59Thanks to Gil's success, Monotype wanted him on a retainer.
28:03And here's the contract.
28:05Gil shall deliver one new typeface comprising both Roman and Italic characters,
28:11for the princely sum of £200 a year.
28:16Doesn't sound a lot, but in today's money that would be more like £10,000.
28:25But by the late 1930s, Britain was at war.
28:30With the threat of Nazi invasion, rationing and austerity were starting to bite.
28:37In an attempt to boost morale,
28:39an accessible and straightforward typeface was required
28:42to use on much of the spirit-lifting propaganda and information posters.
28:48A type that most of the printing companies already had easy access to.
28:53Gil Sands.
28:58Edward Johnston and Eric Gill both passed away,
29:02having witnessed their creations dominate the British landscape.
29:07Gill, who had remained in the public eye for most of his working life,
29:11died of lung cancer in 1939.
29:15Johnston, who had largely retired from public view,
29:18died in his home in Ditchling in 1944.
29:23But the fruits of their work were very much still alive,
29:27turning them both into cult figures in the arts and crafts world.
29:31However, Johnston and Gill, although close friends
29:34and clearly inspirational to each other,
29:37could not have been more different.
29:39The contrasts are evident when examining some of the sculpture and drawings
29:44created by Gill throughout his life.
29:57He was, on the surface, a deeply creative and highly respected figure
30:02in religious and artistic circles.
30:06But behind closed doors, Gill lived a life of sexual obsession that mirrored much of his art.
30:13Gill wasn't a straightforwardly moralistic person.
30:18I believe he was genuinely religious, but his personal life was extremely complex.
30:26Cultural historian Fiona McCarthy began researching Eric Gill in the 1980s for a biography on his intricate artworks
30:34and uncovered details of his morally destructive life.
30:39A lot of the work is religious in content, but then there's this underlying sense of the erotic,
30:46because Gill was passionately interested in sex.
30:51And one gets this sort of curious balance in his work.
30:57He was a very bizarre person, very extreme person, but fascinating to study.
31:05He was working on Prospero and Ariel in the 1930s, the great well-known carving outside the BBC building.
31:14And he was, by then, really very much in the public eye.
31:19And people were seeing him up there on the scaffold, because he was a hand-carver.
31:26Gill couldn't decide whether he wanted to be this humble workman or a superstar.
31:32He was against commerce, but then took lucrative contracts.
31:38He was profoundly religious, but deeply immoral.
31:42So he is quite a hard character to get the grips with.
31:46I think Gill couldn't resist being a celebrity.
31:49He had this longing for public adulation, but he also couldn't resist shocking people.
31:57He'd make, you know, wild statements about politics and sex and man's most precious ornament,
32:06which was, of course, his penis.
32:08He couldn't resist the controversy.
32:14Fiona gained access to the archive of Gill's personal effects, including his diary.
32:21And the disturbing self-confessed entries she found there were to shock the public and tarnish much of his work
32:29thereafter.
32:30I found a lot about the private Gill, because he was very uninhibited in what he wrote down in his
32:38diaries.
32:38And I found a whole history of love affairs, of incestuous relationships with his sisters, incestuous relationships with his children,
32:52sexual experiments with the family, dog even, because Gill was very, very obsessed with sex and the functionings of the
33:01body.
33:02And these experiments were all noted down in this extraordinary, meticulous way in these diaries.
33:10He was, as one of his friends once said, mad about sex.
33:15He could never resist the opportunity.
33:20Even though the diaries were written 50 years prior, the criminal and amoral details listed throughout have led many to
33:28believe you cannot separate Gill's art from his depravities.
33:32And that knowledge of his terrible misdeeds undermines the aesthetic value of his work.
33:39I knew when I unearthed this material that if I wrote the biography that I felt I needed to write,
33:47bringing out all these aberrations of behaviour, his sexual behaviour,
33:53I was going to upset deeply a lot of the people who revered Gill most.
34:00The revelations of Gill's private life led to many critics calling for his work to be removed from public view.
34:10It was, they argued, impossible to appreciate his art, knowing it was produced by the same hands that abused his
34:17children.
34:21Art creations such as the 1923 print entitled Girl in the Bath were viewed in a very different light when
34:29learning it was in fact modelled on his 13-year-old daughter.
34:35We're now more and more aware, aren't we, of the problems of child abuse and the terrible problems that affect
34:43so many people in such desperate ways.
34:46There is a resistance to looking at Gill's art with any seriousness, once you know the details of his personal
34:55life, particularly the incest with his children.
34:59And I understand where these people are coming from, but I certainly don't think that one can write off the
35:08wonderful work that he did
35:10because of things that one has to disapprove of in Gill's personal life.
35:19Despite campaigners wanting Gill's sculptures removed, his typeface has not been spurned in quite the same way.
35:27Possibly because it's a less emotive or suggestive art form.
35:33It remains ubiquitous on modern word processing software and is still used by brands and businesses the world over.
35:41It is instead the flaws within the design of the lettering that's been the subject of modern scrutiny and criticism,
35:48arguing that the sizing and shape of the typeface is not user-friendly.
35:52I've come to meet senior lecturer Ben Archer at the Leicester Print Workshop, who finds Gill's work slightly, well, mismatched.
36:02Ben, Gill described his work as foolproof. What's your take on it?
36:07Not quite foolproof. It's a less than ideal typeface made by an idealist.
36:12Johnston, as a calligrapher, was used to working two-dimensionally, you know, on the flat.
36:18Gill's got a more organic feel about the whole thing.
36:22His curves are very sensuous.
36:24That, I guess, is about him being a letter carver and a sculptor, working with his hands.
36:30Moulding shapes, I think.
36:33But when examining similar shaped letters in Gill's alphabet,
36:37it highlights what some see as weaker elements to the design.
36:43Here we have a lowercase l, a numeral one and an uppercase i.
36:48They're just all identical, aren't they? It must have been very confusing.
36:51The three i's, as we're now calling them.
36:54So you could have something that looks like it's ill or it's a Roman three.
36:59You're not really to know.
37:01Although greatly inspired by Johnston,
37:03Gill did a lot of simplifying and refining to his letters.
37:08Johnston's numeral one here, with its shaved, sloping top,
37:13is a lot more distinguishable from the flat top version of Gill's one,
37:17or uppercase i and lowercase l.
37:21To critics like Ben, many of the issues he has with Gill's alphabets
37:26stem from how difficult they are to distinguish between each other.
37:31Take these lowercase letters of P, Q, D and B.
37:36When thrown together in a box of type,
37:41they are quite easy to mix up when they look pretty much the same upside down and back to front.
37:48For a typeface to a nation of shopkeepers, it's quite a serious problem.
37:54For all that we know that one was taken the other as the inspiration,
38:00you know, they are very different things.
38:02And of course their histories lead in entirely different directions.
38:07Gill Sans became this utilitarian, quotidian sort of superface, the Helvetica of England.
38:13And Johnston was literally locked up and left underground for nearly a century.
38:19You know, protected and not freely available.
38:24Even after their deaths, Johnston and Gill's creations were still subtly encapsulating Britain.
38:32By the middle of the 20th century, it was hard to miss either Johnston or Gill's typefaces.
38:38Johnston was entirely synonymous with London, from the tickets to the signage, the train deliveries to the bus stops.
38:46But as the country approached the late 50s, the first cracks began to surface.
38:52Johnston's typeface in particular had a flaw.
38:55As London Transport demanded more from the text on their publicity, it forced printers and designers to push the boundaries.
39:04The Johnston typeface, designed for wood in the age of steam, was becoming unfit for purpose in the white heat
39:12of technology.
39:13London Transport needed it available in a much greater range of sizes.
39:20Because it was so inflexible, London Transport began using other typefaces for much of its printed material.
39:26For the first time in 30 years, timetables, adverts and posters were not set in Johnston.
39:37Printing technology was advancing rapidly, and the old stalwarts of wartime and austerity were beginning to look a bit jaded.
39:46And even worse, for Gill Sands, it was becoming a victim of its own success.
39:52Designers of the day were looking for something fresh.
39:58Gill Sands and Johnston were being shunned by the country, now replaced by more modern and chic designs.
40:07Typefaces like Helvetica became far more popular.
40:10Its letters were easier for printers to resize, and for Britain, entering its summer of love, it didn't have the
40:17connotations of wartime.
40:23Johnston and Gill Sands were now becoming just a little bit uncool, associated with officialdom, bossing people around, telling them
40:32where to go.
40:33But they weren't entirely dead.
40:35One London-born designer was about to create an album cover for the biggest pop group in the world.
40:42And he was kind of inspired by these big red beauties.
40:52So the front cover of Abbey Road had no typography at all, but the back featured the road name in
40:59ceramic letters, and the track listing was deliberately chosen by the designer John Koch to be Gill Sands.
41:06I'm a Londoner.
41:08I guess I was influenced without knowing it by Johnston, because it's all around me, surrounding me, on buses that
41:14would go by on the tube trains.
41:17Barred from using Johnston, which was exclusively owned and protected by London Transport, Koch turned to Gill Sands.
41:24As a display face, I thought it was perfect for use, but I guess I didn't realise that until I
41:29got to art school, and we'd just start experimenting, and my favourite font was Gill.
41:33I didn't realise that it had fallen out of fashion, to be honest. I just thought it was a great,
41:39legible typeface.
41:43John Koch worked for Apple Records in the 1960s, where he was responsible for design and publicity.
41:54He was renowned for not letting the modern typeface trends of the day dominate his work.
42:01To be honest, I just started playing in Helvetica in my early days in design. It seemed to be too
42:09bland, but Gill somehow just was a great display face. Large, you can make it very stark, but for text,
42:16with those ascenders and descenders, you could just really read it without eye strain.
42:21And on Abbey Road, it wasn't just the choice of an outdated typeface that gave it an unusual look.
42:28My claim to fame with Abbey Road was the fact that I did not display title of the Beatles on
42:34the cover, or Abbey Road, which caused a lot of consternation at the record company at the time.
42:39But if you notice that the lyrics and all the typography, they're all in Gill because it's very legible. And
42:45when we got round to Let It Be, Let It Be was just all Gill, right from the start.
42:50The Beatles didn't know I was using Gill Sans or probably even really care. They didn't notice. They were totally
42:55oblivious to what fonts I was using.
42:57And it just was in my homage, I think, to my background and the Beatles, you know, who came from
43:03Liverpool.
43:10The Electric Light Orchestra, Aerosmith, the Eagles. All Koch designs, all draped in Gill Sans. A typeface that was dying
43:22out in the 50s and 60s was now back.
43:26America seemed to be stuck on Futura. You know, Rod Stewart's coming over and Elo's coming over and a lot
43:31of my clients are coming over, Ringo.
43:33And I just wanted to make them feel at home somehow. They might not have known why, but these are
43:38the fonts that they've grown up with or seen around them.
43:42When I see Gill Sans in other people's work and in my work, I just feel that there's a little
43:47thrill there that they've chosen the right font and the right face.
43:49So it goes without saying that it has spread around the world.
43:56Gill Sans was slowly creeping back into British designs, now digitized by photo typesetting technology.
44:06By the 1980s, it was being used by many designers of the day.
44:12It was, of course, a decade where style was everything.
44:18The 80s was an interesting period. It was an amazing period to be in the middle of this huge explosion
44:24of new music, new fashion, new art, new design.
44:28And some of it was technologically driven. There was stuff we could do in the 80s that you just couldn't
44:33do in the 70s or the 60s.
44:42In the 80s, it became easier to change the size of type and graphics thanks to the benefits of computer
44:48-aided design.
44:51Neville Brodie spent much of the 1980s as the graphic designer for many of the cult magazines of the day,
44:57such as The Face and City Limits.
45:01Both of these adopted the clean elements of Gill Sans, but with a contemporary twist.
45:07We were able now to experiment with this on a regular level. We didn't need to be highly trained type
45:15designers. We could instruct something to be 10% width, for instance.
45:21We bought this in The Face magazine. Particularly with City Limits, it was Gill that we were experimenting with.
45:29We felt we could just be exuberant and joyful and there was absolutely nothing to lose.
45:35I think Gill Sans became, again, representative of that kind of utopian idealism.
45:41Almost an optimistic belief in what culture could bring and society could bring.
45:47I feel so extraordinary. Something's got a hope on me.
45:54It brought that romantic hope for the future that was so absent in the rest of society.
46:02This is a really good example of your punching out your headlining Gill.
46:06The idea really was how many variations could you get out of the same typeface without having to jump funds.
46:11So you were wanting to stick with just the one typeface, but use it in as many different ways as
46:16possible?
46:17Absolutely. So here you have it kind of bold, wide-spaced.
46:20Here you have it bold, condensed. Upper low case here you have it bold, condensed, but wide-spaced.
46:26So we're using it for so many different levels of articulation and information.
46:32Neville's typeface inspiration started from quite a young age.
46:37I came across this, a book from my childhood.
46:41It's an encyclopedia.
46:43And then realised that this was all Gill, and it's Gill at a kind of supersized setting here.
46:50You wouldn't normally do this.
46:52So what they've done is they've recognised in Gill the ability to punch out and articulate content.
46:58And I think that must have sat somewhere in the back of my mind.
47:03A typeface that once had unfashionable and authoritarian undertones was now being used against the establishment.
47:21It was even the typeface of choice on many of the anti-poll tax leaflets.
47:27It's interesting, isn't it, that Gill is used quite a lot by generally left-wing or campaigning groups.
47:34But you don't see a lot of it used by anybody else.
47:36No, the hard right tend to avoid it completely for some strange reason.
47:40Maybe because it has slightly softer or slightly more romantic connotations.
47:46Whilst Gill sounds was invading the country again, Johnston was being virtually annihilated in London.
47:57London Transport were using more contemporary looking typefaces.
48:02Johnston's range of sizes was limited and not digitised for photo typesetting, making it impossible to use on a computer.
48:11What was once the go-to choice for a clear and concise design was now being substituted by other types,
48:19including Gill Sands.
48:25Fearful for Johnston's future, London Transport turned to design agencies to try and save it from a cruel death.
48:34It was a job that was entrusted to a young graphic designer called Eichi Kono, who needed a plan to
48:40digitise it for a computerised industry.
48:46Johnston was originally designed by Edward Johnston for just display purpose station names.
48:55But London Transport couldn't use for many different purposes.
49:00When it's small in size and then it's not visible enough, readable enough.
49:10Eichi began painstakingly redesigning the typeface by hand.
49:16Every day I was drawing and then scratching it with a scalpel and retouching it.
49:24This process took Eichi around 18 months to complete.
49:29For the first time ever, Johnston was digitised for use on a computer.
49:34A typeface that was originally only available in a couple of weights, now came in many more.
49:42So, altogether I made eight different variations, light, medium, bold.
49:48And then when the typeface is reduced in a six point or four point in a small size, it works
49:57much better.
49:59And after the digitisation was done, Johnston survived again.
50:08New Johnston was born.
50:11It meant London Transport could continue to use it on tubes, buses and signs.
50:18Also, the mayor of London started using it as an official typeface.
50:22So I'm very pleased, I'm proud of it and I feel lucky.
50:28Still I feel Johnston and New Suns both are absolutely fantastic humanist sun-series.
50:40And many other similar ones already come out,
50:45but not really kind of, you know, surpass their popularity.
50:52As New Johnston returned to the safety of its home,
50:56at the same time, Gil Sands was being repopularised as well.
51:01In fact, Gil was about to be the trusted typeface of choice for Britain's newest channel.
51:18Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be able to say to you,
51:22Welcome to Channel 4.
51:27The look of Channel 4 was created by designer Martin Lambinen.
51:33All of the channel's on-screen text and many of their printed adverts were all in Gil Sands.
51:40An ironic choice given that the logo was very much of a serif design.
51:46And yet, they worked so well together.
51:49And it appeared a contagious choice.
51:52Much of the television media also started switching to Gil Sands.
51:57It was concise and easy to read.
52:00In 1997, the BBC followed suit.
52:04They wanted a logo and a typeface style that would unify the entire corporation.
52:11Sound familiar?
52:15At this time, the BBC had a different logo for almost every TV and radio channel.
52:23A real mishmash of different designs.
52:27Something needed to be done.
52:29So they turned to the same man who helped stylise Channel 4.
52:34The BBC logo had got out of control.
52:37Just about anybody who had a budget in the BBC would commission a new logo.
52:42The main logo itself was made up of a four-colour printing process.
52:47And so it didn't work in black and white.
52:50So not only did we have that problem, we had sort of 180 different logo types that the BBC were
52:57sort of using.
52:59So the entire identity of the BBC was being fragmented rather than strengthened.
53:07The old, tired BBC logo, set in an italic typeface, was becoming slightly hard to read at an angle.
53:20Martin Lambinen and his team were tasked with redesigning it, moving from a slant to a square.
53:31Quite frankly, the old logo just simply didn't work on television because it was sloping.
53:37And the engineering of television is that.
53:41So it broke up.
53:42So we needed to create a logo type that was going to be technically better and simpler.
53:50And I looked at Gill because of the association that Gill had with the BBC.
53:55And of course all the sculptures around the building are his.
53:59I think the typeface brought a kind of simplicity to the Channel.
54:03We were always aiming to keep things simple and clear.
54:06And it is a very unfussy typeface.
54:10So it probably did emphasise that clarity.
54:19But this evolution of design continues today.
54:23Soon there will be a new type on the block.
54:27After 20 years, the process is happening all over again.
54:33The BBC plan to phase out Gill Sans and replace it with a new in-house typeface.
54:40One that has used Gill as an inspiration.
54:44So for me, it begs just one question.
54:47Why do they want to change it?
54:51Gill Sans was designed in the 1920s for the printed page.
54:54Online, it sort of falls down somewhat.
54:57It's not digitally optimised.
54:59It doesn't have great legibility when you look at long form journalism, for instance.
55:04So we needed to improve that area.
55:06And we currently licence a number of fonts.
55:08We would reduce that spend.
55:10We would own a typeface of our own.
55:13For the past two years, David and his team have been working on a new style of BBC lettering.
55:19A typeface designed for the digital age.
55:24So should we take a look at it?
55:26I'm very excited.
55:27It's still a work in progress, but I'm desperate to show you.
55:31This is the new typographic look of the BBC.
55:34You're getting a first glimpse at it now.
55:37It's still in production, but it's very exciting.
55:38That is absolutely beautiful, isn't it?
55:42It's so lovely to see these echoes of Gill Sans as well on the S, for example.
55:47This Q and the B without that little corner on them.
55:52One of the things that our typographers talk about is the sort of Spartan elegance of Gill Sans.
55:59We've removed the spurs from these, which give it a real sort of friendly character.
56:03When you found the B opposite the P, they're not identical.
56:06There's definite echoes of where we've come from, from the heritage of Gill.
56:12On closer inspection of the new BBC design, there are several obvious changes that jump out when comparing it against
56:19Gill Sans.
56:21Gone are the perfectly circular O's and Roman-style quirky flourishes on the T's and G's.
56:30Now replaced with lettering that uses far greater spacing on screen.
56:36And no-one's worried about the fact that it actually takes up more real estate on screen?
56:39Yes. To tick all those legibility boxes, you have to make it breathe a bit wider.
56:43Right.
56:43For it to work in, say, a wearable or on tiny screens or whatever the future might hold.
56:48The spacing's wider, it's bringing a better legibility, giving it a little bit more breathing space.
56:56It must feel quite exciting to be looking at all these wonderful new typeface ranges.
57:00It's incredibly exciting.
57:03It is so interesting to see this new BBC typeface in the flesh.
57:09But I can't help but wonder whether we've slightly lost some of the panache that Gill Sans brought to it.
57:15Who knows? Maybe he'll be back in the future.
57:18After all, Gill Sans is the comeback king of all typefaces.
57:28For self-confessed design geeks like me, it is truly inspirational that these two classic British typefaces are still influential,
57:39still evolving and still appropriate for modern times.
57:48Whether it's the past glories of the underground, cult album covers or brand new designs.
57:57These two timeless British types are as important and relevant now as they were a century ago.
58:06Johnston and Gill Sans convey that sense of trust and tradition, quintessential British values that no matter how turbulent the
58:17times, you'll get home safely. Just follow the signs.
58:36Coming up on BBC4, Brian Cox on The Ascent of Man with Human Universe next.
58:42I'll see you next time.
58:52I'll see you next time.