I created this typography book to feature the font "Gill Sans," and themed it on the styling of the London Underground since that is the font used for all of their signs, maps, and branding.  My goal was to display the entirety of the font,  and detail everything that is unique about it.    

My process began with a list of all the places Gill Sans can be found.  Eventually, I decided on the London Underground as a theme.  From there I made a search on Pinterest of the London Underground where I found some images that I used as reference for my book.  In the beginning I was hoping to have all of the colors used for the London Underground maps throughout the book, but after trialing the idea on the cover and map I saw it was too busy and instead focused on the red, white, and black of their logo.

Throughout I wanted to keep the theme of the underground going, even on the pages dedicated to the features of the typeface, which  led to idea of having a faded underground map on at least half of each spread.  

The fourth spread, based on one of my reference images, is my favorite.  I used the lowercase 'g' of the typeface to represent a pair of eyeglasses that bring the map into focus.  

My original idea for the cover of the book was to have a train going off into the distance and interacting with the title. After mocking it up in InDesign, as much as I loved the idea I had to acknowledge that it didn't work.  

The biggest lesson that I learned while creating this Type Book is that as much as you love an idea in theory, sometimes you have to sacrifice one or two of them in order to create a better product.