Frederic Goudy Overview

Goudy started out as a bookkeeper who just wasn't very satisfied with accounting. He milled around South Dakota and then Minnesota aimlessly bookkeeping. Finally, when he found work in a small bookstore in Chicago, something clicked. These books weren't filled with... [more]

Goudy started out as a bookkeeper who just wasn't very satisfied with accounting. He milled around South Dakota and then Minnesota aimlessly bookkeeping. Finally, when he found work in a small bookstore in Chicago, something clicked. These books weren't filled with dull numbers but with marbled pages, beautiful illustrations, and elegant print. The more exquisite editions reawakened a fascination he'd felt for type as a young child, when he'd tried to cut typeface by hand using an old copy of a Bruce Foundry specimen book as a reference. Now as an adult, he began to read everything he could find about typography; he befriended and relentlessly grilled professional printers. By 1895, he'd opened up his first press in partnership with an English teacher, Lauren C. Hooper. Camelot Press was not a great success and closed after less than a year. However, from the press and the partnership came a magazine called Chap-Book and a new typeface designed by Goudy and appropriately called "Camelot." Goudy's second publishing venture, the Village Press, was considerably more successful; he moved with it to Massachusetts, and later to New York. The years during which the Press operated out of Forest Hills, Queens, were his most fruitful. During this time he created most of the typefaces that established him as a master. The superior artisanship and elegance of his alphabets are obvious. "Trajan Regular," for example, has a gracious line and a delicate, understated curve, elevating both text and reader. Goudy uses negative space to convey roominess and freedom; the type exudes a soothing confidence and simple integrity. Words in such a type live in a limitless world of the imagination. Goudy continued to create type and publish books until the late '30s and spent the last years of his life lecturing on his craft. A great typographer, he created print that stands alone, its own art, while also enhancing the meaning of the words it spells out. [show less]