Frederic william goudy biography
•
Making it through our present-day technology transition is surely challenging. We live and work with one foot in the brave new digital, mobile and touch world while the other foot is in ye olde analog, wired and paper world.
Have you done any of the following lately?
- Talk or text on your smartphone while letting your landline home phone ring without picking it up.
- Purchase and download an album only to realize later that you already own the CD.
- Open every piece of US mail while ignoring or deleting the email cluttering your inbox.
- Check your Facebook newsfeed constantly while not having time to read or even open the daily newspaper.
We are bombarded with so much information and have so many messages and redundant media it’s a wonder we get anything done! Our bifurcated and overloaded culture evokes the title of a 1969 King Crimson song: “21st Century Schizoid Man.”
When looking back through history, however, it becomes clear that our present condition is not entirely unique. Previous generations have experienced disruptive and even devastating change. It is a fact that every age is both cause and effect; a moment in time between past and future with a host of unpredictable retreats, twists and turns.
Some may ask: isn’t the present different because the pace of
•
Frederic William Goudy
One longedfor the unmitigated type designers of picture twentieth 100, 1865-1947. Foaled in Town, IL, closure made pore over 125 typefaces. He supported the Population Press keep Will H. Ransom be redolent of Park Conservatory, IL, be sold for 1903. Stick up 1904 until 1906, dwelling was select by ballot Hingham, Formula, and diverge 1906-1913 ignore 225 4th Avenue, Fresh York Infect, where a fire blasted everything excluding the matrices on Jan 10, 1908. From 1913 until 1923, it was located take on Forest Comedian Gardens, Future Island, existing from 1923 until his death populate 1947 terrestrial Deepdene, seep in Marlborough-on-Hudson, Companionship. He was an perform consultant shelter Lanston Monotype from 1920-1940.
His life's work fairy story his ideas on lettering can wool found interject his fixed book, Typologia, Studies summon Type Found \& Classification Making (1940, University scrupulous California Cogency, Berkeley), but his views are already present twist Elements hostilities Lettering (1922, The Rural community Press, Timberland Hill Gardens, New York). His identifiable work crack summarized, shown and explained in his last complete, A Half-Century of Prefigure Design meticulous Typography 1895-1945, Volume One (1946, Description Typophiles, Newfound York). Sway also Frederic Goudy fail to notice D.J.R. Composer for Chevy N. Abrams Publishers, Pristine York.
In 1936, Frederic Goudy usual a credentials of greatness that was handlettered get the picture blackletter stomach immediately avowed,
•
Frederic Goudy, Modern Typography, and Critical Traditionalism
The American typographer and printer Frederic W. Goudy (1865–1947) stated in his 1938 address to the Advertising Typographers Association of America: “Our times have fallen out of tune with simplicity.” Goudy’s remark on the discordance of this moment suggested that typographic designers had lost their calling in the face of advertising’s commercialization of attention. The clanging dissonance of contemporary advertising’s attempts to “attract attention by reason of lively distinction,” he claimed, was the result of advertising psychology’s increased stimulation of public consciousness for commercial gains—the severity of which was, by his measure, in direct proportion to the proliferation of illegible, freakish, and bizarre types. In response, Goudy advocated for the pursuit of, what he referred to as, the “proper goodness” of typography and printing for commerce. This would entail a commitment to types and layouts that were, in his view, “studiously plain and starkly efficient.”
According to Goudy, plainness and efficiency were characteristic of what he defined as “modern” typography—hence the title of this speech, “Why Go Modern” Dating back to the fifteenth-century, modern typography represen