Twentieth Century Type Designers

The twentieth century was a remarkably fruitful era for type design. Artists such as Frederic W. Goudy, Adrian Frutiger, and Hermann Zapf each designed dozens, if not more than a hundred, fonts, joining the pantheon of great type designers from the past. There were others, such as Bruce Rogers and Jan Tschichold, who only designed a small handful of typefaces, and just one major type each (Centaur in the case of Rogers and Sabon for Tschichold), but whose isolated single effort reached classic status almost instantly. The mini-biographies in this book, informed, succinct and well-illustrated, provide an excellent introduction to the work of seventeen of the finest twentieth century practitioners in the field.

Full Disclosure: We swiped the above description from the Grolier Club’s exhibition of One Hundred Books Famous in Typography. (See other books from the exhibition that we offer here.)