Drawing an alphabet – g

Initial idea: spectacles

Eric Gill, the man who designed the typeface Gill Sans, was a bit sniffy about ‘g’s that ‘looked like a pair of spectacles’ but managed to design one¹ anyway.

I quite like it and I like to see a ‘2-storey’ ‘g’ in a typeface. It seems more distinguished than a ’g’ without a lower loop. And it’s a bit odd. It doesn’t seem to quite fit with the rest of the alphabet. It’s evolved away from its handwritten shape more than other letters, except ‘a’ which also comes in 2 different forms. Some fonts include both types of both letters.

Failed first attempt

I started by trying to make a ‘g’ with just the loops, filling them in and removing the rest, emphasising the loopiness. This might have worked if you could see the letter in context with other letters. On its own, it was a bit silly.

Monoline

Abandoning that idea, I was a bit stuck. Looking at the other letters² I saw I’d not done a thin or ‘hairline’ letter. So that’s what I did. I kept it ‘monoline’ – the line doesn’t vary in thickness, a feature of hairline letters.³ It’s easier and quicker when you don’t have to worry about the changing thickness of the line.

I didn’t have much ambition after that apart from trying to draw a decent ‘g’ with those constraints, still thinking ‘spectacles’. I left the bottom curve open to make it a bit more unusual and because it suited the shape I’d come up with.

This is part of a project to draw the letters of the alphabet in different styles.

Bonus feature

Letters into logos

It wasn’t the original intent but the potential was obviously there – I’ve turned some of the letters into logos and branding. I’ve had to invent companies to match the logos, which is not the usual order of things.

1. The quote in that link is taken out of context: Gill was putting the words in the mouth of designers of ‘comic modern varieties’ of typeface.
2. I’d put down ideas for most of the letters and worked on them simultaneously.
3. When the line is so thin any differences in thickness are either unnoticeable or too great.