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(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
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Typologia (Studies in Type Design & Type Making, with Comments on the I)
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Typologia presents more or less graphically Frederic Go...)
Typologia presents more or less graphically Frederic Goudy's work in type design and describes his own methods of type production. His remarks on type legibility and fine printing, as presented in the body of the book, present the conclusions of a craftsman intensely interested in every phase of typography.
The book itself, which Goudy was asked by the University of California Press to write, plan, and supervise, has been set in a type designed by Goudy and and first employed for the exclusive use of the University–University of California Old Style.
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Frederic W. Goudy was an American printer, artist and type designer.
Background
Goudy was born on March 8, 1865, in Bloomington, Illinois, the younger son and one of at least three children of John Fleming Gowdy and Amanda Melvina (Truesdell) Gowdy. His father, who changed the spelling of the family name to Goudy about 1883, was of Scottish descent and a native of Ohio. By the time Frederic was eleven, his family had lived in a succession of Illinois towns where his father was schoolmaster, principal, or superintendent of schools. As a boy, he liked best to copy the wood engravings in Harper's Weekly.
Education
Goudy studied in Shelbyville, Illinois high school and graduated in 1883. He later received honorary degrees from several universities - L. H. D. , Syracuse (1939); Litt. D. , Mills (1941); and LL. D. , California (1942).
Career
After graduating in 1883, Goudy worked for a sign painter and then for a photographer in Springfield. His father hoped that Frederic would become a civil engineer, but the younger Goudy lacked the entrance qualifications and, in any case, was not keen for more school. In 1884 his family moved to the prairie cow-town of Highmore in Dakota Territory, where his father entered the real estate business and later became county treasurer, probate court judge, and county superintendent of schools. In his father's real estate office, Goudy taught himself bookkeeping and occasionally arranged type or lettered real estate advertising pieces. Striking off on his own in 1888, he first worked in Minneapolis as a cashier in a department store (1888-1889); he then joined a real estate office in Springfield (1889-1890), where again he could lay out advertisements. In January 1890, Goudy moved to Chicago, where he worked for a financial broker. He was then employed by a real estate office where his advertising designs won recognition and later by A. C. McClurg's bookstore, a position that put him in touch with the private press movement. In 1891 he persuaded a friend, Cyrus Lauron Hooper, an English teacher, to back a small magazine, Modern Advertising; when that failed, he and Hooper joined in forming Camelot Press (initially called Booklet Press) in 1895. Camelot Press put its imprint on Chap-book, a small magazine, and reprinted in book form The Black Art, an article by D. Berkeley Updike. Although the press failed in 1896, his experience with it and with the magazine was valuable. In 1897 Goudy left for Detroit and his new position as bookkeeeper for the Michigan Farmer. He was able to leave only through the sale and prompt collection of payment for a type design, enabling him to pay his few debts. On the strength of such sales and better earnings from commercial lettering, Goudy swore off bookkeeping for life in 1899 when he lost the Detroit job. Returning to Chicago, he prepared advertising for firms like Hart, Schaffner, and Marx and Marshall Field, and in 1900 he began teaching at the Frank Holme School of Illustration, the first of a number of school appointments. At this time their son Frederic Truesdell was born, and in 1903 they moved to Park Ridge, Illinois, where there was a barn suitable for a press. That year the long-lived Village Press was established, and it figured heavily in their moves to the colorful village of Hingham, Massachussets, in 1904 and then, because of declining business, to New York City in 1906. The Parker Building fire of January 10, 1908, wiped out the press, but it was revived two years later in a Brooklyn apartment. Goudy paid his first visit to Europe in the summer of 1909 and the next year went again with his wife and son. During the winter of 1910-1911, on commission by Mitchell Kennerley, he produced the acclaimed Kennerley typeface and a fine book (H. G. Wells, The Door in the Wall) to show it. The new face was warmly received by Bernard Newdigate, and the Caslon firm bought both the British and continental rights. In 1911 Goudy formed Village Letter Foundery to sell Kennerley, Forum, and other faces, as he designed them. From 1920 to 1940 he was art director of Lanston Monotype Machine Company, which owned American rights for many of his designs. In 1914 the Goudys moved the Village Press from Brooklyn to what is now Forest Hills, Queens, which remained their comfortable base of operations for nine years. Their last move was in 1923 to Marlboro, New York, to an old farmhouse with a mill and brook in a park-like setting on the bank of the Hudson River. At Deepdene (as they named their "estate") they wrestled with and conquered the problems of cutting matrices and casting fonts, a family concern with no outside aid. The joyous day, in Goudy's words, on which they overcame these difficulties was somewhat tempered by the discovery that he had lost the sight of his right eye overnight. On January 26, 1939, the mill and workshop burned down. Since all he needed to design type was a pencil and an idea, Goudy worked on till his count of typefaces tallied 116. He taught lettering at the Arts Students League in New York (1916-1924) and graphic arts at New York University (1927-1929). Goudy wrote several books and articles on his craft. Goudy died at Deepdene of a heart attack at the age of eighty-two. After a funeral service in New York, he was cremated and his ashes were placed beside those of his wife in Evergreen Cemetery, Chicago.
Honorary member of the Society of Printers (Boston)
Connections
On June 2, 1897, Goudy married Bertha Matilda Sprinks in Berwyn, Illinois. His wife, who had learned to ink-in the drawings, set the type, operate the pantograph engraving machine, and shape cutters for it, died in 1935.