FREDER DERIC W W GOU GOUDY
by Jensen Luther
Fine printing demands a type without mannerisms, one that is easily and pleasantly readable, masculine, its forms distinct and not made to display the skill of their designer, but instead to help the reader. Type must be easy to read, graceful, but not weak; decorative, but not ornate; beautiful in itself and in composition; austere and formal, with no stale or uninteresting regularity in its irregular parts; simple in design, but not with the bastard simplicity of form which is mere crudity of outline; elegant, that is, gracious in line and fluid in form; and above all it must possess unmistakably the quality we call “art�— that something which comes from the spirit the designer puts unconsciously into the body of his work.
[6] Inspiration Determination [8] [11] Passion
[14] Success
CONTENTS
Passion [5]
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“Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous.� With an attitude like this, it is no wonder that Frederic Goudy is considered to be one of the greatest American type designers. With sheer determination and a yearning for perfection, Goudy has reached achievements that few other type designers have reached.
Passion Frederic Goudy was born on March 8, 1865 in Bloomington, Illinois. While Goudy, did not start creating typefaces and printing until the latter half of his life, he was still inspired by design from the early days of his childhood. When in Sunday School, Goudy took it upon himself to cut out all of the letters of the Ten Commandments and lay them out on empty panels in the church. Impressed by his efforts the church wrote him a check for twenty dollars, and then a little later Goudy was given another twenty dollar check after receiving much positive feedback from the church-goers. This experience would be the first of many for Goudy in finding ways to educate himself about type and making a career out of it. Having moved around to several different towns in the Midwest during his young adult life, Goudy finally settled in Chicago in 1890. While in Chicago, Goudy worked as a bookkeeper at a Chicago Real Estate Firm. After some time working there, Goudy was put in charge of planning and creating some advertisements for the real estate firm. Even though Goudy had no formal training in design and type, it was very apparent that his advertisements were laid out and designed much differently than other ads from competing firms that were being put in the newspaper at the time. The stand-out advertisements that Goudy created caught the attention of A.H. McQuilkin, the editor of The Inland Printer, which was the leading magazine of the Art Nouveau period in America and possibly the first American magazine to use a different cover illustration for each issue. McQuilkin
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took a quick interest in Goudy and took it upon himself to introduce Goudy to some designers in Chicago, including Will Bradley, who had an early connection to The Inland Printer. With typography being a main topic of discussion of the time, Goudy was inspired to quit his job as a bookkeeper and open his own printing shop, the Booklet Press, which would later come to be known as Camelot Press. Going back to his Sunday School days, Goudy again took matters into his own hands and in 1895 he created the first typeface of his career as a typographer. When he was done with it, Goudy sent the letters
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to Dickinson Type Foundry with a note that read, “Might these be worth five dollars?”. Dickinson Type Foundry accepted the letters and sent Goudy ten dollars, making the letters his first typeface that he sold.
Inspired Goudy found his inspiration for creating typefatces through old designs. He “doesn’t believe in casting aside the historic forms,” but rather feels they should be adapted for new needs of design. This mentality can be seen through his type Hadriano, which graces the diplomas of California graduates. When
on a trip to the Lourve, Goudy was taken away by the lettering on the Stone of Hadrian and did a quick paper and pencil rub of the letters P, E and R, which he would take home with him and keep on his desk for seven years. In 1917, when he was asked to create a typeface for California diplomas, Goudy went back to his letters from the Stone of Hadrian and recreated an entire alphabet out of them. In the seven years between visiting the Lourve and creating Hadriano, Goudy moved a number of times until finally settling in New York City to try himself at commercial
Above: Descriptions of two of Goudy’s types Opposite: Goudy through the years
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lettering. After drawing the attention of many important book publishers, Goudy was commissioned to design a typeface for a book by H.G. Wells in 1911. The type was made for the Kennerly press, and thus named after the press. Shortly after being finished, Kennerly found it’s way to England and Germany, making it not only Goudy’s most profitable type, but also the first American type to be sold abroad. By his mid-fifties, Goudy had created drawings for many type faces, all of which were cut by his friend, German engraver Robert Weibking. While Goudy and Weibking made a great team, Goudy felt that he was never fully satisfied with the finished products of his type. Weibking’s work was technically satisfactory, but Goudy insisted that “no punch cutter or matrix engraver, however skillful, can do more than approximate the subtleties of another’s thought and feelings.”
Determination With such stunning success for a man his age, it’s hard to imagine that anything could go wrong for Goudy. In 1921, Goudy finished new drawings for a job that he was commissioned to do and sent them to Weibking only to receive news shortly after that Weibking had passed away. Left on his own and having a job to finish, Goudy decided to teach himself how to cut and engrave, and finally his vision of seeing his through from start to finish was about to become a reality. Out of this, The Village Press and
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Goudy at work drawing type from Bruckner’s Frederic W. Goudy
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Left: A wood-engraved portrait of Goudy made by Charles E. Pont Opposite: Goudy at work cutting type from Popular Science
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Letter Foundry was built from the ground up. Goudy, with no previous experience found a way to make patterns and cast type. Upon completion of the job, Goudy was able to say that he had completed every step of the type’s creation on his own and in the midst of a tragedy, took a whole new turn in his career. For the next fourteen years, Goudy worked relentless to make his foundry picture perfect, as well as drawing, cutting patterns, and casting more type than ever thought possible. Despite his seeming success, tragedy struck again in 1939 when the Village Press caught fire, destroying everything Goudy had created and worked for in a matter of minutes. Relentless in his passion, Goudy, at the age of 73, was thinking of new ways that he would be able to continue his work and decided to turn his library into a laboratory. It is here that Goudy has completed the rest of the type in his collection, which some say numbersall the way to 116 different typefaces.
Mastery Being a one-man-type-making-machine, Goudy is constantly challenged in his daily work. However he seems to have his methods down to a science. He starts with sharp-pointed pencils, which he prefers over pens as they leave no undesired marks to ruin his drawings, and paper to begin his drawings. In his drawings, he uses five guide lines to mark the confines of the letter. One is used to determine ascenders, another descenders, the third is acts a baseline for the whole set, and two more are used to
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Right: Goudy working on his matrix engraving machine.
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cate thickness and variation at the tops of letters like a, e, l, m, and n. Completed drawings are about seven and a half inches tall, which lends its own problems when it comes time for Goudy to cut the type. After the completion of the drawing, Goudy traces them on a sheet of draftsman’s cardboard and
looks for any oddities that need to be smoothed out. Once he is satisfied with the design, he begins to cut each letter out using a magnifying glass, a sharp knife and the utmost precision. He then takes the cut-out sheet and adheres it to another piece of cardboard to make his master pattern. With the help
of a vertical pantograph, Goudy reduces the letters by two-thirds and uses a revolving chisel to cut the letters in type metal, which becomes the working pattern. The final step in the process in engraving the brass matrices from which the final type will be cast. And, if this wasn’t challenging enough, Goudy does
Success A page of Goudy’s original drawings for Scripp’s College
all of this without sight in his right eye, as he lost it some years back.
Success Considering himself a failure at the age of 40, Goudy found his way to make his life one of the greatest successes the world of type has ever
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known. When most his age are retiring, Goudy was working unremitting hours to perfect his skill as a type designer. Even in the face of tragedy, Goudy found that his passion for his craft was enough to keep him going and in the end, it was those tragedies that led Goudy to be the successful man that he was. Few
type designers complete every step of the process from original drawings to the casting of the type and Goudy is able to say that he does it all. With those abilities, dedication, precision and 116 typefaces to his name, a few of which are still used on a regular basis today, one would hardly consider Goudy a failure.
Bruckner, D. J. R., and Frederic W. Goudy. Frederic Goudy. New York: Documents of American Design, 1990. Print. http://www.scrippscollege.edu/campus/press/scrippsfont.php http://www.flickr.com/photos/34564322@ N03/3851064756/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/newhousedesign/3245372249/sizes/o/in/photostream/
TEXT: http://typocurious.com/frederic-w-goudy-a-tribute/ http://www.lawsonarchive.com/printers-to-observegoudy-centenary-march-8/
SOURCES
IMAGES: Boone, Andrew R. “Type by Goudy.” Popular Science Apr. 1942: 114-19. Print.
All text by Jensen Luther Image on PG 4 by Jensen Luther All other images from sources listed. Programs used include Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Photoshop. Fonts used include Goudy Old Style, Goudy Old Style Italic, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica Neue Bold and Helvetica Neue Italic Cover is printed on Basis 80lb Cover Stock Leafs are printed on XPEDX Recycled 32lb Wasau Writing Paper Colors used include: C:46 M:0 Y:49 K:0 Black at 78% Tint Black Printed by Geary Print Shop Made for DAI322.02 in conjunction with Professor Noble at San Francisco State University Š2011
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JENSEN LUTHER DAI 322: COMPUTER GRAPHIC IMAGING DESIGN & INDUSTRY SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY SPRING 2011