Perfect typography is a science rather than an art. A thorough grasp of the craft is indispensable but it is not all, for the sound taste which distinguishes the perfect is based on a clear knowledge of the laws of harmonious form. It is true that it springs, as a rule, even though only in part, from an original [...]

If an ordinary book deserves to be produced with the greatest possible care, then, certainly, so does a classic. The word ‘classic’ is perhaps too freely used nowadays, and is indeed applied to many more books than would have been the case fifty years ago. But all books whose value has been proved to be lasting [...]

Editors’s Note: Frederic W. Goudy, the greatest of American type designers died almost twenty-two years ago, on May 11, 1947. That he still has something to say to the typographer of the 60’s is evident from the following excerpt.
One hundred and twelve years ago type design was generally imagined to be a matter that concerned only [...]

Swash may suggest to today’s younger designer the modern application of numerous curliques and exaggerated strokes to Bookman and numerous other faces—even to Helvetica—but the typographer with a background in metal types is more likely to think of Caslon and Garamond, with their traditional sets of graceful swash letters.
What we seldom realize is that there are [...]

Probably you never read anything on this subject before. Yet it is a matter of which every advertiser and printer should know.
The swash letter, now so popular in the finer kind of typography, is no new trick of the type founder. It has simply been taken from its hiding place in the occasional privately printed handmade [...]

Purpose, readers’ expectations, project feasibility and standards are the four concerns central to the planning of library exhibition catalogues. If these four are addressed successfully, other issues remain incidental. If there is shortfall in any one of these critical zones, no amount of manipulation of the peripherals can disguise the publication’s weakness.
PROJECT STANDARDS
Standards means producing [...]

Purpose, readers’ expectations, project feasibility and standards are the four concerns central to the planning of library exhibition catalogues. If these four are addressed successfully, other issues remain incidental. If there is shortfall in any one of these critical zones, no amount of manipulation of the peripherals can disguise the publication’s weakness.
PROJECT FEASIBILITY
In addition to [...]

Purpose, readers’ expectations, project feasibility and standards are the four concerns central to the planning of library exhibition catalogues. If these four are addressed successfully, other issues remain incidental. If there is shortfall in any one of these critical zones, no amount of manipulation of the peripherals can disguise the publication’s weakness.
READERS’ EXPECTATIONS
To issue any [...]

Purpose, readers’ expectations, project feasibility and standards are the four concerns central to the planning of library exhibition catalogues. If these four are addressed successfully, other issues remain incidental. If there is shortfall in any one of these critical zones, no amount of manipulation of the peripherals can disguise the publication’s weakness.
PURPOSE
“What is this all [...]

I used to spend occasional evenings at the Boston Public Library, reading, partly for the pleasure of the contents, patly for the exhilaration of the printing, the books which William Morris had printed at the Kelmscott Press. This was only five or six years after the close of that establishment, and those who have [...]