Goudy Sans is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

Frederic Goudy Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...

around 1929–1931 and published by

Lanston Monotype Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...

. Unlike many sans-serifs, which often have an unadorned appearance with a geometric or industrial aesthetic, Goudy Sans has a more organic and decorative structure resembling painted lettering, with flared stroke ends and an avoidance of straight lines, typifying Goudy's taste towards designs with an organic feel. Goudy added several complementary decorative alternate characters. Goudy drew a complementary italic with letterforms inspired by handwriting, decorative features such as swashes and curls, again with a number of decorative alternates. Lewis Blackwell in ''20th-Century Type'' describes it as "something of a sport...with pronounced tendency to the inscriptional in its 'chiselled' junctions". The proportions of the lower-case are slightly condensed. Goudy described the design as not popular in his lifetime and did not give it a specific name; it was published as "Goudy Sans Serif" in his lifetime. However, it has been re-released and digitised several times, mostly under the shortened name of Goudy Sans.

Digitisations

Goudy Sans has been digitised by P22 under its LTC imprint in a version relatively similar to the original metal type. During the phototypesetting period of printing,

Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraph ...

developed a new version with adjusted proportions and an expanded range of weights. This was re-released and expanded by ITC to form a popular four-weight version, shown in the sample for this article. The ITC release was also re-released by Adobe.

References

External links

Specimen image in metal type
{{Monotype typefaces Humanist sans-serif typefaces Typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy Monotype typefaces Letterpress typefaces Display typefaces International Typeface Corporation typefaces