PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: typography
Russian artist
El Lissitzky was a Russian painter, typographer, and designer, a pioneer of nonrepresentational art in the early 20th century. His innovations in typography, advertising, and exhibition design were particularly...
German typographer and author
Jan Tschichold was a German typographer and author who played a seminal role in the development of 20th-century graphic design and typography. The son of a sign painter, Tschichold trained as a calligrapher...
English typographer
Stanley Morison was an English typographer, scholar, and historian of printing, particularly remembered for his design of Times New Roman, later called the most successful new typeface of the first half...
American graphic designer and illustrator
Milton Glaser was an American graphic designer, illustrator, and cofounder of the revolutionary Pushpin Studio. Glaser graduated from Cooper Union in New York City in 1951 and studied printmaking with...
English educator, priest, and author
John Fell was an English Anglican priest, author, editor, and typographer who as dean and bishop at Oxford was a benefactor to the University of Oxford and its press. Ordained in 1647, Fell was deprived...
Italian printer
Giambattista Bodoni was an Italian printer who designed several modern typefaces, one of which bears his name and is in common use today. The son of a printer, Bodoni left home as a boy to go to Rome,...
Italian printer
Giovanni Mardersteig was a printer and typographer who, as head of Officina Bodoni, created books exemplifying the highest standards in the art of printing. He studied law at the universities of Bonn,...
English printer
Sir Emery Walker was an engraver and printer associated with the revival of fine printing in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Walker’s formal schooling ended when he was 13. From 1873...
English printer
William Caslon was an English typefounder who, between 1720 and 1726, designed the typeface that bears his name. His work helped to modernize the book, making it a separate creation rather than a printed...
French printer
Christophe Plantin was a French printer, founder of an important printing house and publisher of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible. Plantin learned bookbinding and bookselling at Caen, Normandy, and settled in...
American typographer
Bruce Rogers was a typographer and book designer, highly influential in fine book design in the United States during the early 20th century. Trained as an artist, Rogers began as an illustrator for an...
American printer and typographer
Frederic W. Goudy was an American printer and typographer who designed more than 100 typefaces outstanding for their strength and beauty. Goudy taught himself printing and typography while working as a...
English designer
Sir Francis Meynell was an English book designer particularly associated with the fine editions of Nonesuch Press, publications that were notable for the use of modern mechanical means to achieve results...
English printer
John Baskerville was an English printer and creator of a typeface of great distinction bearing his name, whose works are among the finest examples of the art of printing. Baskerville became a writing master...
American artist
W.A. Dwiggins was an American typographer, book designer, puppeteer, illustrator, and calligrapher, who designed four of the most widely used Linotype faces in the United States and Great Britain: Caledonia,...
American printer and publisher
Daniel Berkeley Updike was an American printer and scholar, founder in 1893 of the distinguished Merrymount Press in Boston. Between 1880 and 1893 Updike worked for the publisher Houghton Mifflin and from...
Swiss printer
Johann Froben was the most famous of the Basel scholar-printers, whose professional innovations revolutionized printing in Basel and whose publications included many outstanding works of scholarship. Froben’s...
Dutch typographer
S.H. de Roos was a book and type designer who was an important figure in the private-press movement in the Netherlands. De Roos studied lithography at the Royal Academy of Art, Amsterdam. Among his early...
French engraver
Philippe Grandjean was a French type engraver particularly noted for his famous series of roman and italic types known as Romain du Roi. The design was commissioned in 1692 for the Imprimerie Royale (royal...
French printer
Simon de Colines was a French printer who pioneered the use of italic types in France. He worked as a partner of Henri Estienne, the founder of an important printing house in Paris. Estienne died in 1520,...
British book designer
Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was an English book designer and binder who contributed much to the success of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Though initially a barrister, he turned in 1883 to bookbinding,...
French engraver
Pierre-Simon Fournier was a French engraver and typefounder particularly noted for decorative typographic ornaments reflecting the Rococo spirit of his day. Trained as an artist, at 17 he went to work...
French printer
Nicolas Jenson was a publisher and printer who developed the roman-style typeface. Apprenticed as a cutter of dies for coinage, Jenson later became master of the royal mint at Tours. In 1458 he went to...
French publisher
Claude Garamond was a French type designer and publisher. Garamond was apprenticed about 1510 to Antoine Augerau and by 1520 was working with the typefounder Geoffroy Tory. His first romans and his grecs...
French printer
Geoffroy Tory was a publisher, printer, author, orthographic reformer, and prolific engraver who was mainly responsible for the French Renaissance style of book decoration and who played a leading part...
American author
Theodore L. De Vinne was an American author of many scholarly books on the history of typography. De Vinne entered the employ of Francis Hart, one of the leading printers in New York City, in 1849 and...