For decades fonts like Helvetica or Futura – nomen est omen – have aged like good wine and lost none of their beauty.  As a scion of Bauhaus, Futura continues to delight the world with a certain geometrical strength of lines and spheres, strength that ensures its timelessness. Yet geometric sans serif typefaces tend to reach a limit, for instance when designing the packaging for foods and cosmetics.

 

In recent times the answer has been found more and more in the beauty of the humanist sans serif type Gill Sans: the right choice when your typography needs to attract attention. With an anatomy inherited from the classic proportions of Roman scripts, it ensures high legibility while remaining graceful and almost delicate, at least when used in light weight.

 

 

Although imperfect and in many aspects inferior to Johnston, its ’mentor typeface’, Gill Sans was to become the typeface of British post-war design, and with that part of the British visual heritage. On the other hand, perhaps it is precisely the little flaws in lettering, the eccentric variations in various font weights and the difficulty in using it the right way that make Gill Sans so likeable and human – besides being humanist. Or, to put it in another way:

 

 

I feel pretty good about myself

Whilst I’m old, I have no wrinkles.

Attractive and glamorous I am.

Charming and appealing as well.

A curvy body I own.

Tempting looks I have.

As “Gill Sans” I am known.

I am beautiful just the way I am!*

 

*found on ‘http://manal-ahmed.blogspot.com/2010/11/typography-project-exploring-properties.html’