As If By Design...

You know that old maxim (“a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”)?

I doubt that any designer would ever take that advice in regard to their own profession. Their designs represent not only their style, but also their thought processes—so, when they design something for themselves, they’re unlikely to shop the job out to another design firm. There is too much personal investment in the work. Do you think that Frank Lloyd Wright would hire another architect to build his own home?

Not bloody likely.

Almost fifty years ago, I began working as a freelance illustrator, and took on occasional design jobs as well. Art directors routinely festoon their offices with cards from illustrators (when they take on a new assignment, they just look at the wall to get an idea about which artist might be best for the project). To promote my illustration work, I sent similar postcards to hundreds of art directors. This was one of them:

The cards were meant to be fun… even if I was not looking for cartoon work (much as I love the work of cartoonists, I’ve never been one).

However, I soon realized that I also need stationery (for sending out invoices, dunning letters to deadbeat clients, etc.). A letterhead is about business, and needs to look “professional”—at least not as frivolous as my graphic samples made me look.

I wanted it to look serious, but not be as boring as the letterheads of corporate or legal firms. It would have nothing but type; no cutesy drawings.

At the top, just my name (Upper and lower case, Roman)—and, below that, “illustration & design” (lower case, Italic). I chose Pantone Warm Gray 3C for the ink—so I could make the header fairly large without feeling too heavy. I wanted it to feel like the type was part of the paper. My contact information was placed at the bottom of the page, framing whatever I had to say at the center of the page.

Since there would be nothing “arty” about the letterhead, I felt that the typography needed to carry the weight, but do so in a friendly manner. I searched through books of type styles (what many people call “fonts”), looking for the perfect ampersand to soften, humanize, the header.

Eventually, I found this:

It was Goudy Oldstyle, bold, italic. I liked everything about Goudy Oldstyle. It had solidity, but felt warmer than Times Roman, and its serifs made it more reader-friendly than the omnipresent Helvetica, nor was it as self-consciously “hip” as Avant Garde.

Over the years, I’ve flirted with other typefaces when appropriate—but always come back to Goudy Oldstyle. “Why,” you are probably asking yourself, “is he dragging us down his typographic memory lane?”

“Memory Lane” is apt.

Very soon… this Spring… I will be moving to my forever house. It’s on a dead-end street, in a wooded area, with a little duck pond, and a lively brook across the street. At the top of our street, fewer than a hundred yards away, a small stone bridge crosses that brook. Near the bridge, there is a small bronze plaque:

By sheer chance, I will be living right next to the studio where Goudy Oldstyle (and a lot of other typefaces) had been created. Goudy’s studio, in an old mill on our brook, burned to the ground in 1939—but the ruins are still there.

All of Goudy’s original type matrices (the molds used to cast “lead” type) were lost. Also lost in the fire, a printing press that had once belonged to William Morris. It had been used to print the famous Kelmscott Chaucer—a typographic masterpiece, illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones, for which Morris created the typeface, Chaucer.

It is April & I’m looking forward to “goon on pilgrimages” to the ruins of Goudy’s print shop.

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