The Art in Type

Stephen Heller recently blogged about Mr. Goudy and features a reprint of the 1928 article from the Monotype Journal title "The Art in Type" - http://imprint.printmag.com/daily-heller/tell-us-about-type-mr-goudy/

Bloomington, Illinois - birthplace of Frederic W. Goudy

The Bloomington Pantagraph recently published a nice article on Fred Goudy and his Bloomington, IL connection. You can read the article at the Pantograph.com website:

Bloomington-born Frederic Goudy was a titan of typeface

Happy Birthday Fred Goudy!

146 years ago today, Frederic W. Goudy, America’s most prolific type designer and champion of the art of typography and printing, was born in Bloomington, Illinois USA.

Last Fall Steve Matteson, Monotype Imaging’s Creative Type Director, had hopes of announcing completion of Goudy’s 1903 typeface “Village” for today. The attachment shows some of the progress. It's highly influenced by William Morris' private press type which had helped reinstate printing as an art form during the height of the Industrial Revolution.

Hopefully this typeface will see the light before Steve’s 146th birthday... here is a sample of the work in progress:

This just in from a non-digital source for Goudy type :-)

Caxton initials
Mediaeval
Friar
Franciscan

Thanks,
Daniel Morris
The Dale Guild Type Foundry
Howell, NJ

www.thedaleguild.com

FANTASTIC conference about early American Typographers... Thanks to Juliet Shen for organizing at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle WA last week.

University of California Old Style Price

I visited the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley and they showed me a letter from Goudy to the manager of the UC Press (a Mr. Farquhar). In the letter Goudy gave them a price of $1250 for 104 roman characters (U&lc, small caps etc); $750 for 80 italic characters* for a private typeface for the press. This would include the matrices with which they could cast all the type they wanted.

The project took about 14 months from the looks of it. The italics were shipped from Deepdene (in Marlborough NY) just days before the workshop burned to the ground destroying all but a couple of drawings and patterns.

McKenzie and Harris still have the matrices and are casting the University of California Old Style to this day.

*Inflation calculator puts that at just over $30,000 in today's terms.

an art director for the monotype

some interesting bits in this announcement produced by Monotype in 1920. He retained his association with Monotype for 27 years. Goudy was hired to elevate and retain the high standards of Monotype.