Gaudi, Frederick

Gaudi did not immediately become a font artist. “At forty, this small, full, rosy-cheeked, mischievous-looking gentleman was bookkeeping for a Chicago realtor and considered himself a failure. Starting almost from scratch at the age when most men had long chosen a vocation, in the next 36 years he drew 113 sets, thus creating more fonts used than the 7 greatest typographers from Gutenberg to Garamon ” ^[3] .

In 1903, Gaudi and Will Ransom founded the Village Press in Park Ridge, Illinois. The venture was inspired by the ideals of the Kelmscott Press Press Movement by William Morris . The Village Press later moved to Boston, then to New York. In 1908, Gaudi created his first significant headset: the E-38 for Lanston Monotype , also known as Goudy Light. In the same year, Village Press burned to the ground, all projects, all equipment were lost. In 1911, Gaudi released his first "hit" - Kennerly Old Style for the anthology of Herbert Wells , published by Mitchell Kennerly. The most widely used headset, Goudy Old Style , was launched by the Lanston Monotype Company in 1915 and has since become a classic.

In 1920-1947, Gaudi was the art director of Lanston Monotype. Since 1927, Gaudi was vice president of the Continental Type Founders Association, which distributed many of its fonts. Towards the end of his life, Gaudi painted more than a hundred headsets, published about 60 articles and 3 books. His wife, Berta Gaudi (1869-1935) was a typesetter. They had a son, Frederick T. Gaudi.

Gaudi is the author of the famous dictum: “Anyone who types in the Gothic font will shag sheep” (“Any man who would letterspace blackletter would shag sheep”). When quoting, the word "shag" is sometimes replaced with "steal", although Gaudi used it more as a euphemism for English fuck ^[4] .

Gaudi is the third most fertile American type designer (after Morris Fuller Benton and R. Hunter Middleton ). Ninety of his headsets were carved and cast. Gaudi's most famous fonts are: Copperplate Gothic and Goudy Old Style.

In 1938 he painted the University of California Oldstyle - an exclusive headset of the University of California. Lanston Monotype released a headset version for widespread use in 1956 (called Californian). ITC released an electronic version in 1983 (under the name ITC Berkeley).

• "The Alphabet," Mitchell Kennerley, NYC, 1918.
• "The Trajan Capitals," Oxford University Press, New York, 1936.
• "Typologia," University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1940.

• Ransom, Will, "The first days of the Village Press: extracts from the diary of Will Ransom," Press of the Woolly Whale, NYC, 1937.
• Bruckner, DJR, "Frederic Goudy," Documents of American Design series, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, NYC, 1990, ISBN 0-8109-1035-7 .

• At myfonts.com
• Linotype Library Designers: Frederic W. Goudy
• Goudy type designs at Lanston Type Co.
• Frederic Goudy Collection - McLean County Museum of History archives
• Frederic Goudy - Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL newspaper)
• Frederick goudy at typophile