William S. Gillies (born 1911,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

– d. 2000) was an American artist, letterer and type designer working in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Gillies is best remembered as an

illustrator An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...

for the covers of several books including the '' Ken Holt Mysteries'', ''

Nancy Drew Mysteries Nancy may refer to: Places France * Nancy, France, a city in the northeastern French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle and formerly the capital of the duchy of Lorraine ** Arrondissement of Nancy, surrounding and including the city of Nancy ...

'', and ''

The Hardy Boys Mysteries ''The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries'' (re-titled ''The Hardy Boys'' for season three) is an American television mystery series based on the ''Hardy Boys'' and ''Nancy Drew'' juvenile novels. The series, which ran from January 30, 1977, to Janu ...

''. He also drew for ''

Collier's Weekly ''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened in 1905 to ''Colli ...

'' magazine and '' Saturday Home'' magazine. He was also a gifted painter of portraits.

Typefaces

* Gillies Gothic series (also called Flott) ** Gillies Light (1935,

Bauer Type Foundry Bauer is a German surname meaning "peasant" or "farmer". For notable people sharing the surname, see Bauer (surname). Bauer may also refer to: Education and literature * Bauer's Lexicon, a dictionary of Biblical Greek * Bauer College of Bus ...

) ** Gillies Bold (1935,

)Mac McGrew, American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, 2nd, revised edition ed. (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Books, 1993), pp 152–153. ** Gillies Medium and Gillies Hairline were designed but never cut. ** Digitized versions of Gillies Gothic have been made by ITC,

MyFonts MyFonts is a digital fonts distributor, based in Woburn, Massachusetts. It was created by Bitstream Inc., launched in September 1999 (during the ATypI conference in Boston), and started selling fonts in March 2000. In November 2011, Monotype Ima ...

and several other digital foundries.

References

* MacGrew, Mac, ''American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century'', Oak Knoll Books, New Castle Delaware, 1993, . *Rollins, Carl Purlington "American Type Designers and Their Work" in '' Print'', vol. 4, #1. *Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. ''The Encyclopedia of Type Faces''. Blandford Press Ltd.: 1953, 1983. .

External links

Ask Art: William S. Gillies (1911 - 2000)
1911 births 2000 deaths 20th-century American illustrators American typographers and type designers American graphic designers {{illustrator-stub