A brief and

Typographic

ex c ursion in to
the life and work of W. A. Dwiggins
by G. M. W a l l a c e.

book design

portland

2 015

illiam Addison Dwiggins

was nothing if not prodigious. As a typographer,
book designer, calligrapher, stencil artist, printer,
painter, puppeteer, writer of essays, criticisms,
fiction, and plays, and designer of advertisements, furniture, costumes, upholstery, and
marionettes, his is a design career of astonishing output (Blumenthal 8889; Fabian).

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orn in 1880 in Martinsville,

Ohio, Dwiggins had ink in his
blood: according to family legend, his maternal grandfather
traveled across Ohio with a printing press (Blumenthal 88). At 19, Dwiggins
moved to Chicago to learn art and design,
studying at the Frank Holme school under
legendary type designer Frederic W. Goudy,
who spurred Dwiggins interest in printing
(Fabian). After graduation and some peregrinations around the eastern states, Dwiggins
and his new wife, Mabel, settled in Hingham,
Massachusetts in 1904; it would be their permanent home and, for much of Dwiggins
later career, his studio workspace (DAPA 111).

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he next twenty years would be

very busy for Dwiggins. He took
commissions from numerous
advertising agencies, a field to
which he was initially drawn
because of his hand-lettering abilities; sold
various designed & printed knickknacks,
such as greeting cards; served as the interim director of Harvard University Press from
19171918; and, in 1919, founded the Society of Calligraphers in Boston, a fictional
organization (which is still frequently mistaken to have been a real organization) to
which he jokingly appointed president his
fictional alter ego and sometime-nom de
plume, Dr. Hermann Pterschein (DAPA
111; Devroye; Fabian; Shaw 1984: 35).

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hen he wasnt busy working on projects for money, Dwiggins was busy
working on projects for
self-enrichment and entertainment. For the Dwigginses home
in Hingham, he designed furniture, carpets, lampshades, fireplace screens, and
a weathervane that reported wind direction at a remote location inside the house;
he also filled the dining room and living
room walls with expansive murals depicting
scenes from his favorite stories (Kennett 30).

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ne of Dwiggins more gleeful

and portentous efforts began in
1913 with his like-minded cousin, Laurence B. Siegfried. Siegfried was a printer himself and,
later, editor of the journal American Printer
and professor of journalism at Syracuse University. Using Dwiggins personal hand-pressa
small behemoth (complete with 150 pounds of
Caslon 471 type) that he dubbed The White
Elephantand Siegfrieds access to presses at
Yale University, the duo produced three issues
of The Fabulist, a literary magazine, between
1915 and 1921. (DAPA 111; Kennett 2829).
While ostensibly intended to [divert themselves] from their regular work and offer an
expressive outlet for their peculiar but potent
individualities, The Fabulist was a showcase of
Dwiggins innovative stencil illustrations and
impressive hand-lettering skills (Kennett 28).

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n 1919, Dwiggins and Siegfried published An Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books, Dwiggins critical satire on publishing and written
in his characteristic style of using humor to drive home points that he wished
to make about serious topics (Kennett
27; Shaw 2006: 43). The impact of An Investigation was immense, sparking reforms
across the entire US book production system, and greatly raised Dwiggins stature
among printers and publishers (Fabian).

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onsiderable misfortune struck

Dwiggins in 1922, when he was
diagnosed with diabetes, which
was difficult to control at the
time. Seemingly undeterred,
Dwiggins vowed to escape the universal
twelve-year-old mind of the purchasing public that advertisings rigid structure imposed
upon his design work (DAPA 113; Shaw 1984:
28). Dwiggins ramped up his creative and written output, began making his famous marionettes as a means of coping with diabetes, and
published another influential tract, Advertising Uses Seduction to Exploit the Weaknesses of Mankind, that further elevated his stature in publishing (Johnston; Shaw 1984: 28).

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artially through public attention

from this essay, and also with the
help of Frederic G. Melcher, editor of Publishers Weekly and R. R.
Bowker & Co. affiliate, and Chester Lane of the Harvard University Press,
Dwiggins met Alfred A. Knopf in 1923, and
the two hit it off marvelously (Blumenthal
92; Shaw 1984: 30). Dwiggins wonderously prolific book-design career began soon
thereafter, and after he became Knopfs
principal designer in 1928, he committed
the majority of his time to creating books,
designing a total of 280 books between 1928
until his death on Christmas Day in 1956
(Blumenthal 92; Fabian; Shaw 1984: 30).

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lthough Dwiggins tremendous

body of work is probably how
hes remembered best, another of his important but lesser-known contributions to book
design was his inclusion of the colophon,
with its details about a books typesetting,
into Knopf books. (Powers; Shaw 1984: 30)
The colophon was primarily a component of
private-press books, and though some audiences initially found it pretentious and affected, its use became an industry standard, and
today, every Knopf hardcover still includes
a colophon with an altered form of Dwiggins particular title: A Note on the Type in
Which this Book is Set (Shaw 1984: 3031).

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ype was to become the foremost

interest in Dwiggins work. Because he wanted to be remembered as a typographerand because acquiring the books
featuring his original essays on design proved
too time-consuming, thus foiling my
intended directionthe remainder of this essay will focus on one of Dwiggins highlighted contributions to typography: the Metro
type family (ADC Global; Clifford 60).

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otwithstanding the fact that

much of Dwiggins career in
advertising involved lettering,
it wasnt until his tenure with
Knopf that he, at age 48, first
attempted to design a typeface (Fabian). Perhaps Dwiggins had always intended to create
a typeface, but the story behind his first such
work, Metro, implies he did so almost on a lark.

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uring the mid-1920s, typography was changing. Thanks

to the influence of Bauhausaffiliated designers like Jan
Tschichold, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, and Herbert Bayer, sans-serif designs caught on in Europe and eventually
spread to North America, with R. Hunter
Middleton producing the first new sans serif in the United StatesStellarin 1929
(Lawson 324325; Novin; Stock-Allen).

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owever, many designers with

traditionalist leanings, including Dwiggins and printer/historian of typography Daniel
Berkeley Updike, scoffed at the
idea of adopting sans serifsand these scoffs
were not small, either (Lawson 330). Updike
made no mention of sans serifs in his landmark 1922 type primer, Printing Types, and
only relented some fifteen years later when
he stated that Futura and Gill Sans were acceptable if sans serif fonts must be had; likewise Dwiggins, writing in his own influential
tome, 1928s design manual Layout in Advertising, intentionally excluded sans serifs from
his survey, save Gothica newspaper mainstaywhich he indicated was not very legible, lacked good capitals, and simply [had]
no grace (Lawson 330; Shaw 2006: 37).

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fter reading Layout and meeting

with Siegfried, Harry L. Gage,
the assistant director of Linotype typography at Mergenthaler Linotype, wrote to Dwiggins
inquiring if the designer would like to create
and illustrate a good [sans serif] design for
Linotype (Blumenthal 92). Dwiggins accepted Gages offer, beginning work on the design
immediately, and after meeting with Dwiggins at his home in Hingham, Gage signed an
exclusive contract with Dwiggins for $2,900
per yearthe equivalent of over $39,000
in 2014 dollarsmonths before Dwiggins
even completed his sans serif (Consumer
Price Index; Lawson 330; Shaw 2006: 38).

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age and Mergenthaler wanted a

type in the Futura mode, and
when Dwiggins delivered his
first typeface, Metroblack, in
early 1931, it was met admiration but also consternation (Lawson 332). As
Paul Shaw, prominent Dwiggins scholar, explains it, Metroblacks originality lay in the
retention of old-style forms of letters such as
a, e and g. This was also its flaw (Shaw 2006:
44). Despite this failure, Dwiggins remained
undaunted, still hoping to infuse his sans serif
with a humanist structure, and at the behest
of Mergenthaler, he set about revising Metroblack. (Lawson 332; Shaw 2006: 44). After
completing new characters for A, G, J, M, N,
V, W, a, e, g, v, and w, Dwiggins considered
the new typeface finished, and after Mergenthaler launched it in 1931 under a new name,
Metroblack no. 2, the typeface became a success (Shaw 2006: 44). Though this successful
iteration of Metro arrived too late to supplant
Futura or Gill Sansand though Mergenthaler eventually replaced Metro with Spartan, a Futura look-alikethe Metro family
prospered in the newspaper industry, where it
is still used today (Lawson 332; Shaw 1984: 38).
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ven though Dwiggins declared

Metroblacks initial incarnation a
hellish [font] when you really stop
to look at it, his work on the Metro family is notable for its consistency and overall harmony (Connare; Shaw
1984: 38). As Vincent Connare has noted,
while typefaces such as [Univers and Helvetica] suffer from overuse and have a Germanic or Swiss geometric structure, Metro has a warm and subtle craft quality that
is closer to the human hand (Connare).

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n designing his first type, and in a form

(sans serif) with which he ostensibly disagreed, Dwiggins strove to bring his calligraphic touch to Metros design, later
warning that [if] you dont get your type
warm it will just be smooth, commonplace,
third-rate piece of good machine technique
no use setting down warm human ideasjust
a box full of rivets (Carter 67; Connare).
True to form, Metro is notable for its peculiar
fusion of geometric and calligraphic touches:
uniquely angular and peaked features found
in the capitals; pen-based elements, such
as the tapering off of the small fs ascender;
and the not-quite-mechanical, not-quitepainted swash of the capital Q (Connare).

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etro helped Dwiggins get

his typographers sea-legs,
and it also gave him an opportunity to begin adapting
one of his previous skills
stencilsto typography (Shaw 2006: 43).

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igilantly hand-drawing his initial designs at large sizes, Dwiggins would give his completed drafts to an assistant who
would draw them at enormous
sizesup to sixty-four times twelve-point
sizeand, taking what worked from these
drafts, Dwiggins cut stencils in celluloid for
each letter at twenty-four-point size (Dwiggins
2). After that, his assistant used the stencils
with a projector to enlarge the images while
Dwiggins took notes, and then Dwiggins
created larger stencils, this time in sixty-fourpoint size using cardboard (Dwiggins 34).

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ccording to Dwiggins, by creating these differing sets of

enlargementsthe enlarged
drawings and the cardboard
stencilsand then comparing them to the original, smaller-sized
typeface drafts, you can see what you are
doing; you can thicken or thin your stems
or modify curves for another trial if needed, or go ahead with the rest of the letters
on the original scheme (Dwiggins 4).

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inally, after these processes were

complete, Dwiggins would move
onto the next stage and begin drafting designs closer to the typefaces
intended final form (Dwiggins 5).

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lthough he didnt fully utilize this method until designing his Falcon typeface in the
1940s, Dwiggins stencil and
enlargement techniques informed the design processes of his two subsequent and most successful typefaces, Electra (1935) and Caledonia (1939) (Connare).

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A Note on the Type

The body text of this booklet is set in Electra LT
Std, an opentype edition of W. A. Dwiggins original 1935 typeface adapted for Adobe programs. The
front matter, back matter, and page numbers are set
in New Caledonia LT Std, released by Linotype in
the late 1980s as an updated edition of Dwiggins
1939 font, Caledoniaone of the most widely used
book typefaces of all time (Adobe). All drop caps
are set in DwigginsForty Eight, a digitization of
Dwiggins initials produced through Plimpton Press
in the 1930s, produced by David Rakowski and released in 1999. Dwiggins passed away on Christmas Day, and Ive colored the first and last pairs of
drop caps red and green to commemorate this date.
GMW

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[ 25 ]

Works Cited
ADC Global. W. A. Dwiggins. 1979; 2015. Retrieved from
adcglobal.org/hall-of-fame/w-a-dwiggins/.
Adobe. New Caledonia Std Regular. 2015. Retrieved from
store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US
&event=displayFont&code=CDOQ10005000.
Blumenthal, Joseph. The Printed Book in America. Boston:
D.R. Godine, 1977.
Clifford, John. Graphic Icons: Visionaries Who Shaped Modern
Graphic Design. Berkeley: Peachpit Press, 2014.
Consumer Price Index. 1929 dollars in 2014 dollars. Retrieved
from in2013dollars.com/ 1929-dollars-to-2014-dollars.
DAPA and Dorothy Abbe. Concerning Dwiggins: DAPA
Interview with Dorothy Abbe. The Journal of Decorative and
Propaganda Arts 7, Illustrated Book Theme Issue (Winter
1988): 110129.
Devroye, Luc. William Addison Dwiggins. Mar. 1, 2015.
Retrieved from luc.devroye.org/ fonts-26309.html.
Dwiggins, W. A. WAD to RR: a letter about type design.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, Dept. of Printing
and Graphic Arts, 1940. Retrieved from archive.org/details/
WADtoRR1940.
Fabian, Nicholas. Designer Extraordinaire: William Addison
Dwiggins. Oct. 19, 2000. Retrieved from web.archive.org/
web/20001012002613/web.idirect.com/~nfhome/dwiggins.htm.

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Johnston, Alastair. Father of Graphic Design: Dwiggins in

Living Color. Booktryst (blog). Aug. 21, 2012. Retrieved from
booktryst.com/2012/08/digging-dwiggins-in-technicolor.html.
Kennett, Bruce. The Private Press Activities of William Addison
Dwiggins Part 1. Parenthesis 21 (Autumn 2011): p. 2730.
Retrieved from fpba.com/parenthesis/select-articles/
p21_private_press_activities_of_dwiggins.html.
Lawson, Alexander. Anatomy of a Typeface. Boston: Godine,
1990.
Novin, Guity. Chapter 54: A History of Typeface. A History
of Graphic Design (blog). 2014. Retrieved from guity-novin.
blogspot.com/2012/03/history-of-type-face.html.
Powers, Will. I had never seen this done before. Why was it
done? Colophons (Msg 9). Jul. 21, 2009. Message posted to
http://typophile.com/node/60136.
Shaw, Paul. Tradition and Innovation: The Design Work of
William Addison Dwiggins. Design Issues 1, no. 2 (Autumn
1984): 2641.
. W.A. Dwiggins: Jack of all Trades, master of more than
one. Linotype Matrix 4, no. 2 (2006): 3645. Retrieved from
issuu.com/linotype/docs/matrix_4.2.
Stock-Allen, Nancy. Typography at the Bauhaus. 2011.
Retrieved from designhistory.org/Avant_Garde_pages/
BauhausType.html.

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Image Sources
Front: Stencil calligraphy by Dwiggins. (Source: DAPA.)
Page 2: Portrait of W. A. Dwiggins by Dorothy Abbe, 1954.
(Source: letterformarchive.org/dwiggins/.)
Page 3: A photo of the Dwiggins residence in Hingham, MA;
Dwiggins studio was on the second floor. (Source: DAPA.)
Page 4: Dwiggins hand-lettered return address for the Society of
Calligraphers. (Source: letterformarchive.org/dwiggins/.)
Page 5: Excerpt from linocut by Dwiggins, 1921. (Source: flickr.
com/photos/ulfjacobsen/8360430111/in/pool-wadwiggins/.)
Page 6 (l): The seal from Dwiggins White Elephant press; its
motto reads What shall I make? (Source: Kennett.)
Page 6 (r): Header from The Fabulist 3, 1921. (Source: Kennett.)
Page 7: A graph designed by Dwiggins from An Investigation into
the Physical Properties of Books, 1917. (Source: Kennett.)
Page 8: Several of the marionettes designed by Dwiggins.
(Source: letterformarchive.org/dwiggins/.)
Page 9: Dwiggins title page for H. G. Wells The Time Machine,
Random House in 1931. (Source: www.athenna.com.)
Page 10: Sample of Dwiggins-style endnote on type. (Source:
livingbetween wednesdays.com/?p=4215.)
Page 11: Metroblack and Metrolite. (Source: Shaw 1984).

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Page 12: One of Dwiggins hand-lettered advertisements, 1928.

(Source: letterformarchive.org/dwiggins/.)
Page 13: The Bauhaus, Germany. (Source: ronenbekerman.com/
bauhaus-at-dessau-3d-visualiztion-by-bertrand-benoit/.)
Page 14: Dwiggins stencil illustration from Robert Nathans One
More Spring, Overbrook Press, 1935. (Source: graphicarts.
princeton.edu/2013/08/23/one-more-spring/.)
Page 15: Dwiggins Layout in Advertising, 1928. (Source: DAPA.)
Page 17: Dwiggins Metroblack typeface in a poster by Priscilla
Vozella, 2014. (Source: luc.devroye.org/fonts-26309.html.)
Page 18: Metroblack. (Source: fontpalace.com.)
Page 19: Dwiggins stencil illustration from The Saturday Evening
Post, 1927. (Source: letterformarchive.org/dwiggins/.)
Page 20: Dwiggins in his studio, late 1930s. (Source: Shaw 2006.)
Page 21: Celluloid stencils from one of Dwiggins experimental
typefaces. (Source: flickr.com/photos/kupfers/7977556839/.)
Page 22: Design for lettertype stencil. (Source: Dwiggins.)
Page 23: Alphabet for experimental roman typeface. (Source: luc.
devroye.org/fonts-26309.html.)
Page 24: Proof sheet of Dwiggins capitals from Plimpton Press,
circa 1936. (Source: letterformarchive.org/dwiggins/.)

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