Frederic Goudy (1865 – 1947) – Typographic Genius

Frederic Goudy (1865 – 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley.

Recognition of a man’s genius may come at the beginning of his career or after long years of patient labour. Medals and honours have been won by generals for past military exploits, for victories where armies clashed and gained a few metres of enemy territory. Scientists have been acclaimed, political leaders awarded honorary university degrees, and philanthropists inscribed their names over art galleries and museums. Such honours are customary and expected.

Typographic Genius

Less dramatic accomplishments and contributions to the culture of modern civilisation by artists, artisans and designers have been but little publicised. In 1937, a mild-mannered, quiet and kindly man was recognised as an absolute genius – Frederic W. Goudy, one of the most famous type designers in the world!

His work had been gradually unfolding, beginning with a modest attempt at lettering and being rewarded by moderate success. His life has been dramatic, a complete reversal of what his boyhood friends looked for, and his final victory a culmination of a lifetime devoted to his craft. At 30 years of age, he was a bookkeeper out of work. Towards the end of his life, he was one of America’s prolific type designers. The typographic world agrees that Goudy may call himself a humble type designer, but the typographical world described him as a great artist. In the history of visual and graphic design, he was one of the most accomplished in his field at the time.

His equals would be Johann Gutenberg, who invented movable type and set and printed the famous Gutenberg Bible; William Morris, Jenson, Caslon, Garamond and other great designers of an earlier time. These masters of the past designed and executed only a few typefaces each. William Morris became famous for two.

In 1898 Frederic Goudy sat beside the window of his boarding house, idly sketching the capital letters of the alphabet. After finishing, he mailed it to the Dickenson Type Foundry in Boston. He asked five dollars for it, and they sent him twice that. He called it Camelot, thinking, perhaps, of the old Arthurian legends. This began his career.

He was called the modern “glorifier of type,” and authorities agree that the beauty and clarity he had brought to the printed word revolutionised typography in Europe and the United States.

How do you design type?

To design type requires making some 80 separate drawings to scale. He then traces them in turn onto four-ply hard drawing paper will, cutting out each character carefully by hand and mounting it on another sheet of the drawing board to form patterns. This is only the beginning. The final steps are technical problems requiring long study and intimate knowledge. The working methods of skilled and highly intuitive artists are difficult to describe — even from the man himself. When lecturing on lettering at university, he was asked by a young student, “how do you design type?”

“You think of a letter, and then you mark around.” He said when interviewed, “there did not seem any reason why I should turn out to be a type designer, except that I wanted to. I wanted that more than anything else because I believe there was an opportunity to improve typography — to secure more beauty, dignity and readability.”

Frederick Goudy was somewhat of a sentimentalist at heart, as are many artisans. He dedicated his hundredth typeface to his wife, “this conscientious and talented craftswoman who was my beloved companion for many years.” It was she who encouraged him — he wrote in the dedication, “when my courage faulted; uncomplaining, she enjoyed the privations and vicissitudes of our early companionship. Her consummate craftsmanship made possible many difficult undertakings; great attainments, that the claim which rightfully was hers should come, instead, to me. She unselfishly aided me in my work in the fields of type design and typography and enabled me to attain a measure of success which I could not have achieved alone.”

On Genius

“Genius is the expression of strong individuality and extends the limits of tradition instead of attempting to invent a new one. Genius cultivates old fields in new ways. While a designer of strong artistic personality may modify the laws of tradition more or less according to his strength and ability, he is nevertheless seldom free from its influence. Few great artists have ever become great by deliberately disregarding tradition. As for myself, I have made designs that reverted for their inspiration to the lapidary character of the early Romans; others that were based on the classic types of Jenson, Ratdolt, Aldus etc. “

In his later years, he admitted that he had artistic freedom. “I draw with practically no reference to any of the sources mentioned, but rely largely on the broad impressions of early forms study and practice, and governed by a technical knowledge of the requirements of type foundries and typography.”

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