Frederic W. Goudy was born in Bloomington Illinois on March 8, 1865. He was an American type designer who designed 122 typefaces over his lifetime. He didn’t become a type designer until the age of 40. Goudy is one the best known American typographers who contributed the most to the Golden Age of American Printing. His most famous faces were Copperplate Gothic and Goudy Old Style. On May 13, 1947 the New York Herald daily newspaper mentioned, “He was a designer and a philosopher, a writer and a craftsman, a printer, who preached of beauty in utility. In his time he won vast acclaim and once it was said that half of the display lines in a national magazine were set in Goudy type”.
Goudy Sans was mainly inspired by Roman lapidary inscriptions. Goudy Sans is one of the few sans serif typefaces Goudy produced. The Goudy Sans family was produced in three stages. First, Goudy created the three designs of Heavy, Light, and Light Italic for metal typesetting. Years later they were improved by different designers and three more faces were added to the family. Some characteristics of Goudy Sans is its friendliness, and sense of playfulness, with an unusual cursive italic. Goudy Sans italic expresses a small insight of the roman design.
