Biography Dwiggins

It’s about W.A. Dwiggins A Biography

B Addison ‘William I Dwiggins was a nice man

O according to many people.

A very hardGworker, he took his work very seriously but R himself lightly and that made A it a pleasure to work with him’.

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Dorothy Abbe B H

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Y WILLIAM DWIGGINS 1880–1956

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Dwiggings was an accomplished type designer, illustrator and a graphic designer. But most important: we know him of coining the term ‘graphic designer’ in 1922 to describe his various activities in printed communications, like book design, illustration, typography, lettering and calligraphy.

At the turn of the century, Dwiggins went to Chicago to study at the Frank Holmes School of Illustration, and by 1904 he had settled, for life as it turned out, in Hingham, Massachusetts, to pursue his career.

In his early years, Dwiggins did most of his work in advertising. And in 1927, he wrote Layout in Advertising. Which later became a very famous book. It was considered the standard text on the subject, so much so that the book was reissued twenty years later.

His heart was in the making of books, however, and this led him to strive to improve the generally poor quality of trade books in America.

He was one of design’s first critical voices.

One of his common critiques was that type foundries were not making type that was appropriate enough. Believing that the advent of the machine was in no way incompatible with artistic excellence, Dwiggins set about devising methods to use the new technology to artistic advantage.

He disliked European moderns, like Futura, Kabel, and Erbar. Mergenthaler Linotype charged him to do better, and he did, creating Metro, his first typeface. After designing Metroblack and Metrolight he created four other marketed typefaces: Electra, Caledonia, Eldorado and Falcon.

Later Bill Dwiggins relieved the pressure of work by building a miniature theater called: ‘The marionette theater’. Together with his typographical work and other forms of his art, now resides in the Boston Public Library, where three rooms are devoted to the Dwiggins Collection.

In the last two years of his life, Dwiggins’s failing health made it impossible to work any longer, but his good humor never deserted him. He said, “It was a grand adventure; I am content.”

William Addison Dwiggins died at his home on Christmas Day, 1956. ~