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Frederic William Goudy

One of the great type designers of the twentieth century, 1865-1947. Born in Bloomington, IL, he made over 125 typefaces. He founded the Village Press with Will H. Ransom at Park Ridge, IL, in 1903. From 1904 until 1906, it was in Hingham, MA, and from 1906-1913 at 225 Fourth Avenue, New York City, where a fire destroyed everything except the matrices on January 10, 1908. From 1913 until 1923, it was located in Forest Hill Gardens, Long Island, and from 1923 until his death in 1947 at Deepdene, in Marlborough-on-Hudson, NY. He was an art consultant for Lanston Monotype from 1920-1940.

His life's work and his ideas on typography can be found in his great book, Typologia, Studies in Type Design \& Type Making (1940, University of California Press, Berkeley), but his views are already present in Elements of Lettering (1922, The Village Press, Forest Hill Gardens, New York). His own work is summarized, shown and explained in his last book, A Half-Century of Type Design and Typography 1895-1945, Volume One (1946, The Typophiles, New York). See also Frederic Goudy by D.J.R. Bruckner for Harry N. Abrams Publishers, New York.

In 1936, Frederic Goudy received a certificate of excellence that was handlettered in blackletter and immediately stated, Anyone who would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep. He also wrote: All the old fellows stole our best ideas, and Someday I'll design a typeface without a K in it, and then let's see the bastards misspell my name.

His 116 fonts include

• Camelot (1896, Dickinson Type Foundry). He sold another design in 1897 to that foundry, but it was never published. McGrew writes: Camelot or Camelot Oldstyle was the first typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy. He offered it to Dickinson Type Foundry (part of ATF) in Boston, which accepted it and sent him $10, twice what he had modestly asked for it. This was in 1896; it was apparently cut and released the following year as drawn, without lowercase. In February 1900 a design patent was issued in the names of Goudy and Joseph W. Phinney, and assigned to ATF. Phinney was a well-known designer for Dickinson-ATF, and apparently it was he who added the lowercase alphabet. Its success encouraged Goudy to make a distinguished career of type designing, and this typeface was included in ATF specimen books as late as 1941. Compare Canterbury.
• De Vinne Roman (1898)
• Copperplate (1901): See Copperplate Gothic Hand (2009, Gerd Wiescher), Copperplate URW, or Copperplate EF (Elsner&Flake).
• Pabst Roman (1902)
• Village (1902). Some say 1903. Village was originally designed by Frederic Goudy in 1903 for Kuppenheimer & Company for advertising use, but it was decided it would be too expensive to cast. It was later adopted as the house face for Goudy's and Will Ransom's Village Press. The matrices were cut and the type cast by Wiebking. The design was influenced by William Morris's Golden Type. This Venetian typeface was digitized by David Berlow (1994, FontBureau), by Paul D. Hunt (2005), and by Steve Matteson (2018), who simply called his revival Village. Hunt's version was eventually released in 2016 by P22 as LTC Village. Ivan Louette (Belgium) is working on a fine version of Village as well.
• Bertham (1936), his 100th typeface, named for his wife, Bertha.
• Copperplate Gothic (ATF, 1905): The Bitstream version was done by Clarence Marder.
• Goudy Old Style (ATF, 1914-1915): A 15% heavier weight was made by Morris Fuller Benton in 1919. Bitstream and URW++ sell that as Goudy Catalogue. See also Goudy Catalogue EF (Elsner&Flake), Bitstream's Goudy Old Style, Scangraphic's Goudy Old Style SB (2004), Infinitype's Goudy Old Style, Bitstream's Venetian 522, and Softmaker's G790.
• ATF Cloister Initials (1917-1918). This was revived digitally by several foundries: Alter Littera did Initials ATF Cloister (2012). Group Type created Cloister Initials (2006).
• Goudy Handtooled (1916): A decorative font. Elsner&Flake and Bitstream have a digital version. The Bitstream version used to be called Venetian 523.
• Goudy Modern (Lanston, 1918): Goudy Modern MT is the Agfa-Monotype version. Adobe's version is confusingly called Monotype Goudy Modern.
• Hadriano (1918): Agfa-Monotype has a digital version, as does Adobe.
• Goudy Heavyface (ATF, 1925-1932): Created as a possible competitor of Cooper Black. Bitstream has a digital version.
• Goudy Newstyle (1921): additional letterforms are provided to distinguish different pronunciations. This legible semi-Venetian typeface was cut by Wiebking and recut in 1935. It was sold to Monotype in 1942. Revival by Steve Matteson in 2018 as Newstyle.
• Italian Oldtyle (+Italic) (ca. 1925): made after Dove, Monotype's president, prompted Goudy to make a Venetian typeface to compete with ATF's Cloister Old Style.
• Venezia Italic (1925), to accompany Venezia. George W. Jones of the English Linotype company had it made by Linotype.
• Aries (1925-1926): a kind of blackletter typeface in the style of Subiaco done for Spencer Kellogg for his new private press (he never used it).
• Goudy Dutch: based on handwriting on an envelope from Holland. Goudy lost the drawings.
• Companion Old Style and Italic
• Deepdene (1927). See D690 Roman on the SoftMaker MegaFont XXL CD, 2002. Deepdene became a Berthold font, and at Berthold it was digitized and refreshed by G.G. Lange from 1982-1983. URW also has a Deepdene family. But above all, one could pick up a free two-style revival by Barry Schwartz, Linden Hill (2010, OFL). View various Deepdene implementations.
• Goudy Text (1928). Based on the textura blackletter types of by Johann Gutenberg in the fifteenth century, Goudy Text has a narrow, ordinary lowercase. It can be used in display advertising and on certificates and invitations. Goudy Text is a "blackletter" type first used in 1928 by Goudy in a Christmas card from type cast at his own foundry. Among the digital versions, see LTC Goudy Text (P22 and Lanston; by Paul D. Hunt; this family includes LTC Goudy Text Lombardic Caps) and Goudy Text CT (Jason Castle).
• Kaatskill (1929, Lanston Monotype): a beautiful old style figures font originally done for an edition of Rip van Winkle. Mac McGrew: Kaatskill is a private typeface designed and cut by Frederic W. Goudy for use in an edition of Rip Van Winkle which he made for The Limited Editions Club, in 1929. Goudy says that what he had in mind was merely to design a type "as simple, legible, vigorous, clear, and effective in detail as could, and which would at the same time show no note of strangeness in the mass. ...I feel that Kaatskill owes nothing in its design to any existing face. and the type therefore is as truly an American type as anything so hidebound by tradition as type can be." It is named for the Catskill mountains, which were the locale of Goudy's home and workshop as well as of the story. See Trajan Title.
• Remington Typewriter (1929)
• Kennerley (1930) (see his book A Novel Type Foundery for specimens). The Berthold foundry, where the types can now be bought in digital form, mentions the dates 1911-1924.
• Ornate Titling (1931). See LTC Goudy Ornate (Lanston) and Goudy Ornate (2002, Ascender).
• Kennerley Bold and Bold Italic, and Kennerley Open Caps, to accompany Kennerley Old Style.
• Goudy Heavy Face (+Italic), made to please Harvey Best, the successor of Dove at Lanston Monotype.
• Marlborough (1930s): a typeface whose design was sold in 1942 to Monotype, but nothing came of it.
• Tory Text (1935). A blackletter typeface inspired by the lettre batarde used by Geoffroy Tory in his Champs Fleury.
• University (of California) Old Style (1938). Also called Californian (1938). A commercial version of this is ITC Berkeley Oldstyle by Tony Stan (1983). Font Bureau published FB Californian (1994, Carol Twombly, David Berlow, Jane Patterson).
• Bulmer (1939)
• Goudy Sans: ITC Goudy Sans (1986), LTC Goudy Sans (2006, Colin Kahn), Goudy Elegant (SoftMaker), Moon Cresta (Ray and Chikako Larabie, 2010) and Goudy Sans EF (now gone?) are digital revivals of Goudy's Goudy Sans family from 1929. GoudySorts MT, an Agfa Monotype font consisting of beautiful ornaments.
• Goudy Thirty. Mac McGrew: When Monotype suggested that Goudy design a type that that company might bring out after his death, to be called Goudy Thirty (from the newspaper term for the end of a story), he thought of a design he had started for a western college. That commission had fallen through, so the design was unfinished. Then, as Goudy relates, "This design struck me as particularly adapted to the purpose. As I worked on it I had determined to make it, as far as I was able, my last word in type design, a type in which would give my imagination full rein, and a type by which as a designer would be willing to stand or fall." Completed in 1942, it was kept under cover by Monotype and not released until 1953-long after his death in 1947. But he designed several types after this one, so it was not the last one from his hands. Goudy Thirty is a fine recreation of a fifteenth-century round gothic, excellent for period pieces. For digital versions, see LTC Goudy Thirty (Lanston, now P22 Lanston) and Goudy Thirty (a free font by Dieter Steffmann).
• Nabisco (1921).
• Garamont (1921).
• Goudy Initials. These are floriated caps.
• New Village Text (1938). A hybrid consisting of the capitals of Tory Text and the lower case of Deepdene.

Several foundries specialize in Goudy's types. These include P22/Lanston, which has an almost complete digital collection, Ascender Monotype, and Castle Type, which offers Goudy Trajan (2003), Goudy Text, Goudy Stout and Goudy Lombardy. WTC Goudy was digitized ca. 1986 by WTC.

Links: Bio by Nicolas Fabian. Alternate URL. Andrew R. Boone's article on Goudy in Popular Science, 1942. Goudy's typefaces listed by Paulo W. Obituary, May 13, 1947, New York Times, Time Magazine, November 6. 1933, Amy Duncan's thesis at BSU entitled "Howdy Goudy: Frederic W. Goudy and the Private Press in the Midwest", A 2009 lecture on Goudy by Steve Matteson (TypeCon 2009, Atlanta), Melbert B. Cary Jr. collection of Goudyana. Wikipedia: List of typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy. Linotype link. FontShop link.

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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type scene in Illinois ⦿ Type scene in New York ⦿ Copperplate ⦿ Typefaces inspired by the Trajan column in Rome ⦿ Cooper Black ⦿ Ornamental caps typefaces ⦿ Textura ⦿ Floriated initial caps ⦿ Venetian or antiqua typefaces ⦿ Frederic William Goudy ⦿ Morris Fuller Benton ⦿ Dieter Steffmann ⦿