It is now almost twenty-two years since the death of America’s most widely known and respected type designer, Frederic W. Goudy. The bare chronological facts state that he was born in Bloomington, Illinois, on March 8, 1865, and died in his home at Deepdene, Marlboro-on-Hudson on May 11,1947. Beginning in 1895, and ending in 1944, Goudy designed some 123 types, a formidable production when it is recalled that he did not begin his career until he was thirty years of age and did not take type design seriously until he was forty-five.

During this period Goudy, as a type designer specializing in types for advertising display, became a force representing all that was best in first-rate letterforms. While many of his types are long-forgotten his influence remains strong in every area where there is a respect for honest craftsmanship in design.

Many of the examples of Goudy’s work shown in this issue are from the Frederic W. Goudy-Howard W. Coggeshall Memorial Workshop of the School of Printing of the Rochester Institute of Technology, which contains a number of the types which survived the fire at Deepdene in 1939, which destroyed so much of his work.