• Review of popularity of Goudy-designed type faces shows strong favor
• During his lifetime, FG’s enthusiasm led him to design 123 type faces
• Goudy’s individualism also led him to learn the craft of typefounding

Ten years ago, in May, 1947, there occurred the death of Frederic W. Goudy, perhaps the most successful of American type designers. His name is worthy of inclusion in any list of great type designers from Gutenberg to the present.

During the last years of Goudy’s life and for some time after his death, some modern practitioners of typography belittled his contributions. This group believed him to have been too “prolific” to have made any real contribution to type design. Such a statement is too broad to carry any weight of authority, even though some of Goudy’s best friends felt that the designer did pay a little too much attention to the extension of his productivity merely in terms of numbers.

Apart from the number of notable types available to the modern printer from his hand, Goudy’s most solid contribution was undoubtedly an awakening of interest in the craft aspects of printing. Following on the heels of the William Morris and the private press revivals of the nineties, Goudy lent both his talent and his enthusiasm to the movement, which for the first time placed American printers at the forefront of the fine printers of the world.

Designed Total of 123 Type Faces

From the moment that Goudy’s first type design, Camelot, was accepted in 1896 by the Dickenson Type Foundry of Boston, until the autumn of 1944 when Marlborough Text was designed, a total of 123 types were brought into being. Owing to many circumstances, a large number have been almost forgotten, but a fair share are still in constant use.

Fred Goudy was an individualist who liked to go his own way. This factor is probably responsible for the loss to contemporary printers of many of the types he designed.

There are many problems involved in producing a type for a foundry or for a composing machine, even when the designer knows exactly what he is about. Goudy boasted frequently about his ability to draw his types freehand, without resort to straight-edge, compass or curve.

In preparing the working drawings of a new type for the making of the pattern plate, prior to the engraving of the matrix or the punch, the staff of the foundry must introduce quite minute changes in the design to conform to manufacturing requirements.

Goudy never took kindly to any sort of change. As a result of a difference of opinion with the Monotype firm, he established his own foundry and arranged for the marketing of his own type by a type agency.

Laboriously, Goudy learned the craft of typefounding and established in Marlboro-on-Hudson, New York, a small plant in which he could carry out every step of type manufacturing, from original design to fonted type.

The art of engraving a matrix, he learned, was no easy matter. Nevertheless, he persevered and, like his illustrious predecessors, had the satisfaction of becoming a free agent in an ancient craft.

The period at Deepdene—as his home was called—was one of his most productive. Inspiration seemed to thrive on freedom of expression, and many of his best designs were created during this time. Unfortunately, a disastrous fire destroyed his foundry in January, 1939, wiping out half of a lifetime of creative labor. Drawings, patterns, matrices, types and equipment—all were lost, to Goudy and to posterity.

Fire Destroyed Beautiful Types

Among the types destroyed were Trajan, a classic Roman capital inspired by the Trajan Column inscriptions; Tory, a French black letter, and Deepdene Text, also a black letter; Friar, an interesting uncial, and several other faces which would have been of value to contemporary printers and typographers.

When we attempt to gauge Goudy’s contributions to the types in wide use today, we must remember that his faces were restricted to single types. Here in the United States the slugcasting machine is in wide use. Goudy never designed a face for such a machine, which is unfortunate, as so much of our modern typesetting originates on this kind of equipment.

Of the types now available from the Lanston Monotype Company, it would be difficult to pick out the design which is most popular. Deepdene, however, is this writer’s preference as the most enduring of the roman styles produced by Goudy. Designed in 1927, after Goudy had been inspired by the beautiful Lutetia type of van Krimpen, from Holland, Deepdene is an old-style face in the Venetian mode. Its set of capitals is as fine as any Goudy ever drew—and he did have a flair for the capital form, as a study of his many types will show. Goudy’s interest in capitals is evidenced by Trajan, Forum, and Hadriano, all inscriptional letters.

The italic of Deepdene is in what is called the “Chancery” form—close-fitting, spiky italic letters which owe their origin to the Chancery, or church writing hand of the late 15th century. This fine italic has doubly assured the acceptance of Deepdene as one of Goudy’s best type designs.

First Success Was Kennerley

Goudy’s first great success with a book type came in 1911, when he designed Kennerley for a book by H.G. Wells, The Door in the Wall, printed by Goudy for Mitchell Kennerley, the New York publisher. Kennerley type was inspired by the famous old types of Oxford University brought from Holland about 1667 by Bishop Fell.

Goudy’s own interpretation gave an Italian flavor to the font. This design was warmer than a strictly Dutch type might have been. While not widely used at the present time, Kennerley is available in many composing rooms and does retain some popularity.

Following Kennerley, the type which met with probably the widest acceptance of any Goudy design, was Goudy Old Style of American Type Founders. First produced in 1915, it was copied by foundries here and abroad. Again, the capital form has helped to make Goudy Old Style a popular type, particularly in title page composition and in printing which requires the use of dignified capitals, such as certificates, resolutions, etc. In a vote among printers the world over, probably Goudy Old Style would take first place in the honors list of Goudy types.

Two other Roman faces from Goudy’s drawing board which retain steady esteem are Garamont and Italian Old Style. The former of these revivals was produced by Monotype in 1923, after Goudy had examined books printed in the Janson types owned by the French National Printing Office.

Bruce Rogers has remarked of Garamont, “. . . it seems to me one of the most successful reproductions of an early type that any modern designer has yet given us.” Of all the copies of the famous French face, the Goudy version may be easily recognized by some individualized touches, such as the noncrossing “W” and the shoulder-aligned “J.”

Italian Old Style was drawn from a Venetian type of Ehrhard Ratdolt, first used about 1475. This type has been applied with distinction by many famous printers and is still in limited favor.

A Roman type which has found great popularity in England is Goudy Modern. First shown to American printers in the publication Ars Typographica, it was coldly received. However, the English Monotype firm liked it, on the authority of the famous typographical historian, Stanley Morison. The face is considered by Europeans to be possibly the best Goudy letter.

Of the Monotype-produced faces, two others are worth mentioning. Goudy Bible, used by Bruce Rogers in his most recent large bible, published by World Publishing Company a few years ago, is a development of Goudy’s Newstyle type, with several letters redesigned at Rogers’ direction, and with Goudy’s permission. Next, came a private type, drawn for and named after the University of California; it’s a beautiful face which was first used in Goudy’s own book, Typologia, published by that institution in 1940.

American printers no longer use black letter types very much, but when they do, the chances are that Goudy Text will be the selection. A “lettre-de-forme” or true text letter, this face is now the most widely used type of its kind, and with the accompanying Lombardic Capitals would be at home in the cases of any printer practicing during the last five centuries.

In any list showing Goudy designs which have stood the test of time, it is necessary to mention the leading bestseller of the lot, even though book typographers wouldn’t give it a second thought. This is Copperplate Gothic, Goudy’s twelfth type, produced by ATF in 1905.

This short essay has been written in an effort to make a small survey of Goudy types which, ten years after his death, show little signs of being forgotten.

Readers wishing to explore further Goudy’s approach to his work are referred to Typologia, already mentioned, and his autobiography, A Half Century of Type Design and Typography, published by the Typophiles. Both books are now out of print, but are available in the larger public libraries. To be published later this year by World Publishing Company is a critical analysis of Goudy and his work, written by Paul A. Bennett. This book will undoubtedly be the definitive work on the great type designer.

This article first appeared in “The Composing Room” column of the June 1957 issue of The Inland Printer.