March 16, 2004

• Exceptional find!
• i seem to recall reading on a list of design horror stories somewhere a bit about a person using gill sans in a project, only to have the client tell her that it wasn't appropriate to use any of gill's fonts as gill was apparently some sort of sexual deviant. might be wrong, though, could have been another fonty designer. but i'm pretty sure it was gill. (have no idea if the client in question was right about the accusation or not, though.) be damned if i can remember the link though, can't seem to google it...
• I am a big fan of Eric Gill, and Joanna is one of my very favourite typefaces. The trouble with his thoughts on social reform (and the reason why there isn't much available online) is that they are a mixture of 50% genius and 50% barking insanity. See, e.g., this article on his cult of the penis. Then there is the satyriasis, the incest, the bestiality .. Much as I admire Gill there are certain aspects of his character that are pretty inexcusable. "Integrated life" it certainly wasn't.
• clf: it's midnight and I can't be bothered to scroll all the way down the thread, but the comment you are thinking of is probably buried somewhere in this inordinately long collection of designers' horror stories. There are some people who think that Gill's sculptures in Westminster Cathedral ought to be removed because of his sexual behaviour. Personally I think this is idiotic, but given the current moral panic about paedophilia in the Catholic Church I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.
• Quite marvelous, sciurus, thanks.
• verstegan- I pirated 'the Appeal of an Intergrated Life' from here but then decided the link was a bit too old and and not as cool as the other ones.
• sciurus: thanks for that, and for the other excellent links. If you are interested in wood engravings, you might like this site dedicated to the engravings of Gwen Raverat. She and Gill make up a sort of yin and yang of twentieth-century wood engraving. Her work is as feminine and delicate as his is masculine and assertive. (Yes, gender stereotyping, I know, I know .. But click on the link and you will see what I mean.) Many of her engravings are tiny, and it is astonishing how much detail and atmosphere she manages to pack into them.
• Gwen Raverat is awesome.
• verstegan - that's where i thought i read it, but searching for "gill", "sans" or even "font" won't find the comment i was looking for on that page (which is why i didn't link to it). i even searched the mefi threads that mention that site, but i didn't see the comment there either.
• oh and by the way - the gwen raverat link is neat, but frustrating. many of the images look as if they're meant to illustrate a story (recurring characters, etc.) but there's no link to the story itself that i could see. and i do like me some stories. i used to immerse myself into a series of old books my parents bought at a yard sale, some reprints of old literature put together by some (probably now-defunct) publishing group. they had some really interesting illustrations. the fairy tale collections (grimm's and h.c. anderson's) had a particularly strong impact on me... these were printed apparently before some of the tales were civilized a bit, so lots of deaths and unnecessary meanness on the part of evil parents, stepparents, and kings'n'queens. great stuff. so if anybody knows what story (or stories) these were meant to illustrate, and knows where i can find them, post away.
• CLF - grimm's fairy tales? Barnes and Nobles released a quite nice collection of them with some graphic woodcarving prints. I'll look up the details when I'm at home.