What do Schiphol Airport and a Focus leaflet have in common? 12 March 2008
Posted by Anders Hanson in Lib Dems, Politics.Tags: democrat sans, focus, fonts, gill sans, liberal democrats, Politics
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Pay attention all political anoraks who also write Focus leaflets, because here’s an exciting posting on fonts. That particularly includes you Duncan Borrowman and Ed Maxfield (sorry, private joke).
It turns out that Paul Mijksenaar, the person who designed the signage at the airports in Amsterdam, Athens and Frankfurt, has Gill Sans Serif as his font of choice.
Gill Sans also happens to be the standard font used by Lib Dem campaigners for their Focus leaflets (many are written in other fonts of course, but it is the one that party training usually recommends).
What I hadn’t realised is how much the font is used when I have only ever heard of it in the context of the Liberal Democrats. According to the Wikipedia article on Gill Sans (who spends their time writing these things? Mind you, who apart from me reads them?) it is also the original font used by Penguin Books, as well as being used by Fox News, the band Bloc Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Given that fonts are usually a key part of the brand and image of a company or organisation, I’d be intrigued to know what the similarities are between the ones I have just mentioned and the Liberal Democrats.
For anyone who cares and who doesn’t know, and more importantly hasn’t fallen asleep by this point, the font of choice for headlines in Lib Dem Focus leaflets is usually Democrat Sans. I understand this was created specifically for the Liberal Democrats and so there probably isn’t much to say about it.
Actually, the official font what what’s left of the CPGB is Helvetica Sans. You’re thinking of the CPB. Big difference!
I meant Helvetica Neue
Sorry, I misread Wikipedia. Although to be honest I wouldn’t have known there was a difference anyway.
Democrat Sans was created for the party in 1991 by DTP Types limited.
In 2006 I had a lot of work done to it by DTP Types - making it Open Type (so mac and PC users could use it) and adding a full Unicode character set (so it gained a Euro symbol, and could be used by the Welsh). At that time I also looked at a complete Democrat Sans family - condensed versions, italicised versions, lighter versions etc, but the cost was prohibitive. I hate soem of the amateur italicisation and condensing of Democrat Sans I see, they are crimes against font design (and just look shabby and amateur).
Incidentally I am a huge fan of Helvetica Neue and use the Black Condensed version for headlines instead of Democrat Sans. I also tend to use Zapf Humanist aka Optima instead of Gill Sans.