William Addison Dwiggins

William Addison Dwiggins (June 19 1880 Martinsville, Ohio - December 25 1956 Hingham, Massachusetts ) was a U.S. type designer, calligrapher, and book designer. He attained prominence as an illustrator and commercial artist, and he brought to the designing of type and books some of the boldness that he displayed in his advertising work.

His typefaces—Electra and Caledonia are most widely used—were specifically designed for Linotype composition and have the clean spareness of the motor age. Metro is most notable as his most modern sans serif typeface. Metro was developed by Linotype in the late 1920s in response to similar type being sold from European foundries such as Futura, Gill Sans, and Erbar.

His scathing attack on contemporary book designers in "An Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books" (1919) led to his working with the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. A series of finely conceived and executed trade books followed and did much to increase public interest in book format. Dwiggins was perhaps more responsible than any other designer for the marked improvement in book design in the 1920s and 1930s. He gained recognition as a calligrapher and wrote much on the graphic arts, notably essays collected in MSS by WAD (1949), and his "Layout in Advertising" (1928; rev. ed. 1949) remains standard.

WAD (as he called himself) is credited with coining the term 'graphic designer' in 1922 [Livingston, Alan and Isabella., 'Dictionary of graphic design and designers'. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992] to describe his various activities in book design, illustration, typography, lettering and calligraphy (his first typeface designs were released much later). The term did not achieve widespread usage until after the Second World War.

Dwiggins' love of wood carving led to his creation of a marionette theatre in a garage (.5 Irving Street) behind his home in Hingham, Massachusetts (30 Leavitt Street), and a puppet group named the Püterschein Authority. In 1933 he performed his first show there, "The Mystery of the Blind Beggarman." Dwiggins built his second theatre under his studio at 45 Irving Street. Further productions of the Püterschein Authority included "Prelude to Eden," "Brother Jeromy," "Millennium 1," and "The Princess Primrose of Shahaban in Persia." Most of his marionettes were twelve inches tall. [The Dwiggins Marionettes: A Complete Experimental Theatre in Miniature, Dorothy Abbe (Harry N. Abrams Inc. 1964)] The marionettes were donated to the three-room Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library in 1967. [American Puppetry: Collections, History and Performance, edited by Phyllis T. Dircks, "The Dwiggins Marionettes at the Boston Public Library," Roberta Zonghi, pp 196-202]

In 1957, shortly after his death, Bookbuilders of Boston, an organization of book publishing professionals that Dwiggins helped to establish, renamed their highest award the W.A. Dwiggins Award.

Typefaces

* Metroblack (1928)
* Electra (1935)
* Caledonia (1938)
* Charter (1946)
* Hingham (not released)
* Experimental 267D (not released)
* Eldorado (1953)
* Falcon
* Stuyvesant
* Arcadia
* Tippecanoe
* Winchester
*Metro Sans

Bibliography

* "An Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books" (1919)
* "Layout in Advertising" (1928)
* "Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency, Particularly in Point of its Design" (The Limited Editions Club, 1932)
* "Form Letters: Illustrator to Author" (William Edwin Rudge, 1930)
* "Millennium 1" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1945)

Books illustrated or designed

* "The Complete Angler", Izaak Walton (Merrymount Press, 1928)
* "Paraphs," Hermann Püterschein (Alfred A Knopf for the Society of Calligraphers, 1928)
* "The Lone Striker", Robert Frost (Alfred A. Knopf, 1933)
* "Beau Brummell", Virginia Woolf (Rimington & Hooper, 1930)
* "The Witch Wolf: An Uncle Remus Story", Joel Chandler Harris (Bacon & Brown, 1921)

External links

* [http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1979/?id=264 Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work]
* [http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/SpecialCollection/dwiggins/annotatedinventory/part1.html Inventory of W. A. Dwiggins Collection] , University of Maryland Libraries

External references

* "Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design", Walter Tracy (1986), pp 174-194
* [http://www.connare.com/essays.htm "The Type Designs of William Addison Dwiggins"] , Vincent Connare, May 22, 2000

Footnotes