LANSTON FONTS | FREDERIC GOUDY TYPEFACES

¶ FREDERIC W. GOUDY was appointed Art Director of the Lanston Monotype Machine Company of Philadelphia May 18th 1920. Goudy worked in that capacity for 29 years. It would be hard to imagine the aesthetic poverty the reading public would have suffered without the devoted contribution that Goudy has left all of us. Both Lanston and the reading public will be forever in Frederic Goudy's debt.

I would seat Goudy at the dinning room table elbow to elbow with other notable American cultural nation builders; Frank Lloyd Wright, the Greene brothers, architects, both Starling Burgess, Nat Herreshoff, yacht designers and the Wright brothers, aviation pioneers.

I defend my opinion that culture trumps economics in nation building. Culture is more important in the long run that who ran city hall.

My evidence is such.

That archeologist spend little time looking for the name and place of the local bureaucrat but lots of time looking for amphoras. F.W. Goudy made sure that typographical amphoras are in good supply.

Their handles of his makings are found by all that practice typography, for instance Goudy Initials , Goudy Oldstyle, Kennerley Oldstyle, Deepdene Oldstyle , Hadriano Title, Record Title and the ever popular Pabst Oldstyle. Other faces such as Copperplate Gothic is not as commonly attributed to his genius, but his all the same.

It is with the greatest honour that we offer direct lineage to Goudy's type designs. The Lanston Type Company's digitization of Goudy fonts are 'closest to source'. Californian Oldstyle for instance was taken directly from lead patterns crafted by Goudy's own hands at the studio in Deepdene.