I guess it has to be dead people? My two demons are still alive.

Dead Saints: Granjon, Gill, Tracy.

hhp

I'm afraid you've been "beaten to the punch":
http://lynnster.com/saints.html

Claude Garamond, Giambattista Bodoni, and
Adrian Frutiger would be the matrix of my choices

i'd hafta thow my vote for gill, goudy and koch

Thanks guys, this is super! Keep 'em coming!

It's too bad that someone has already done something with "patron saints" (cool website BTW)

Don't forget Hermann Zapf and the awesome Americans -- Morris Fuller Benton and William A. Dwiggins.

Paul, I don't know if we're limited to deceased figures, so I'm not sure if Herr Zapf might not appreciate being on this list.

My "patron saints" would have to be Dwiggins (no surprise there), Rudolph Ruzicka, and C.H. Griffith.

Oh yeah, WAD for sure.

I don't name living demons, lest they haunt me in real life.

hhp

Live saint: Carter?

I'm inspired by type designers who wrote about their work.

St. Wilbert In Cambie Street

http://lanstontype.com/WilHudson.html
http://lanstontype.com/Wil-Hudson-Typographer.html

Simon Pierre Fournier
WAD
MF Benton
Johnston

Gill was a nonce...so he's in hell and not a saint at all.

My hell is not the pope's.
And Johnston? The calligrapher who made one single font (and it was ugly)?

hhp

Johston may deserve to be on the list, if only by association. His work inspired countless of people (rather patron saint-y, huh!), including John Howard Benson of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, Eric Gill, and Hermann Zapf. I'd be willing to bet that Johnston IS Zapf's patron saint, or guardian angel, or whatever

Goudy, Zapf, Van Krimpen, Dwiggins, Koch, Behrens, MF Benton, and anyone who avoids the use of Murray Hill.

. . . and I agree: St. Wilbert in Cambie Street was a great handler of type.

Jim Rimmer

Gill ripped it off and called it Gill and Monotype finished/fixed it and shipped it.. since Gill was too lazy to finish it correctly..he was probably out in the garden drawing naked girls.. and sheep.

No chanelling going on here, just inspiration. How about some really old guys:
Koster, Gutenburg, Manutius, Baskerville, Caslon IV, Caslon
The J posse: Jenson, Janson & Jannon
And the super scribblers: Arrighi, Palatino, Tagliente, George Bickam (!)

R

I can't believe I'm about to defend Gill....

I just wanted to point out that Johnston's Underground typeface started out as a collaboration between Gill and Johnston. Gill actually got paid some substantial fee for his contribution. But he dropped out before the project was finished.

So Johnston Underground had substantial input from Gill, and therefore accusing Gill of "ripping it off" seems pretty goofy to me.

That being said, I still have a lot of questions about his personal life that would lead me to think twice about considering him a typographic saint. I mean, I have nothing against free love in general, but I'm not sure one's practice of it should extend to one's family pets and one's own children.

T

> think twice about considering him a typographic saint.

Just concentrate on "typographic".

hhp

Apparently, the Pope is leaning towards declaring St Isidore of Seville (7th century) the patron saint of the Internet, following the lead of Spanish catholics in 1999 who declared him Protector of the Internet. He produced the first encyclopaedia, among other things.

2-13-1443_1355345%2C00.html,http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1355345,00.html

"All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection. By reading we learn what we did not know; by reflection we retain what we have learned. " (from his Book of Maxims)

***

Oswald of Chicago:

"A quick way to have your type forgotten is to bore the reader with repetitions of some small cleverness."

"Hybridizers have a moral responsibility...in crossing the calligraphic with the typographic."

"Letters made odd deliberately are ill-at-ease and lead restricted lives."

Francesco Griffo / Giovanni Tagliente.

(I'm not the only one who likes Bembo, am I?)

OK, everyone; here is my communion of saints. Only two of your suggestions are not here. Thanks for all of your suggestions. WAD was mentioned seven times! Hurray Graphic Design!

Hurray also, for MyFonts.com, whose list of 1743 people associated with Typography I culled through in order to get these names.

To my knowledge, all of the people listed below are dead. If any of you know these people below, are one of these people below, love one of these people below, and they are wrongly included, i.e., not dead, please accept my appologies in advance!

If any of you are itching for a fight because you disagree with someone who I've included/excluded from this list, bring it on!. That's whay we have online forums, isn't it ?

Otl Aicher
Josef Albers
Ludovico degli Arrighi
Antoine Augereau
John Baskerville
Saul Bass
Pietro Bembo
John Howard Benson
Linn Boyd Benton
Morris Fuller Benton
Lucian Bernhard
Pierre B

Cool. Pretty long list though, eh?

GGL is not only alive, he came out of retirement recently!

You can't really exclude Kis if you're going to include Janson.

And if you're going to include Louis XIV, you'll have to throw in the entire RdR gang: Anisson, Jaugeon, Simonneau, etc.

And then there's Deberny (since you're including Peignot).

Lastly, it's nice to see Morison excluded, but then you do have Pierpont.

hhp

Well, a year does have 365 days! Just like the Catholic Church's calendar of saints (if that's what it is really called?) My calendar will have saints days on many days (like a third of them, so far). My list may not be long enough! Some saints are paired up on church calendars, too, making the list even longer.

What I don't want to make is something like Pentagram's 2004 calendar. They got 12 designers (living and dead) picked. Each month has the days set in a different typeface. In addition to holidays, the 12 type designers birthdays are listed. That is a neat promo piece, but I'm not going to learn anything new from it. I'd like my calendar to be a bit more encyclopedic.

Since we are on the subject of religion, let me issue a public mea culpa here for including GGL on my list!

Since this will be my calendar, the list sort of follows my interests. I don't think that I could hurt my own feelings You'll notice that there are several "Offenbachers" on the list (Klingspors, Koch, Hoefer), since I'm studying there now, and am naturally interested on what happend there in the past.

I'm going to have to stay steadfast with Gill, though. His work has inspired me for years. Although he most certaintly was, in some regards, a shady character, we are only speaking about allegations here. He has been dead since 1940, and rumors have a funny way of spreading. If you give me definitive legal evidence that he molested children, or engaged in rampant beastiality, I'll take him off my list. Ok?

> Well, a year does have 365 days!

Oh, I forgot about the calendar angle. Makes sense now.

> If you give me definitive legal evidence ....

Although we can (but probably shouldn't...) define what "molesting children" or "rampant bestiality" mean exactly, it's pretty well admitted that he did engage in some (mild?) forms of those - the evidence is mostly in his own diaries! The "child" was his daughter, but it's not clear to me what a good minimum age is for a consenting adult. The dog on the other hand was probably too down-to-earth to have consented, but a dog is a dog; you should see what "respectable" people do to cows in preparing hamburger patties... And the good news for Gill is that he wasn't unflinching about it - he does seem to have had an internal struggle and remorse.

hhp

uh oh. so this is what happens when you don't read the published journals of your heros

looks like i'll be adding a lot more books to my reading list

I was the one who brought it up, and it was basically a reaction to the phrase "patron saint," which I think can be reasonably believed to imply that someone is of good character (whatever the heck that is).

Although many of us keep our professional and private lives separate, Gill didn't very much at all. I mean, some of his students who studied under Gill, really *studied under* Gill, if you get my drift.

If we'd been asked whose work we found most inspirational and admired most, I'd have had absolutely no qualms about seeing Gill on the list.

Dan may very well have meant "patron saint" to mean no more than that, of course. But I don't think I'm out of line in thinking that its more literal meaning can be seen as flavoring the concept a little.

T

I think you should't look at it from such a Christian angle. Sure, that's the association "Saint" usually has, but then what about the title of Cabarga's book: "Logo, Font and Lettering Bible"?

And what about Griffo? He was hanged for the murder of his son-in-law. And Goudy was a certifiable skirt-chaser. And Koch was a woman-hater. And Beatrice Warde was a husband-swapper who caused Frederic to hang himself*. And hey, don't let me start on friggin' Louis XIV!! Gill simply made the mistake of keeping a diary.

* Speaking of which, Dan, you really need to add Cassandre. Even though he hung himself because a font house rejected his designs - what a lousy Catholic, eh?

hhp

Hahahaha! Brill site Nick.

What if each month had a group from the same time period?

Antoine Augereau, Geoffroy Tory, and Claude Garamond.

The Family Didot.

Gill, Johnston and Morison.

Hehe. Dwiggins. How'd I forget Dwiggins?

Gill is NOT in hell. He was a free-spirit that had his own ideas of how to live his life. (Not that I agree with his ways mind you...hehehe...just that I doubt he is in hell.)

Vince not all type designer's cut their own metal. Dwiggins didn't cut his own metal for pete's sake.

Further, just as I've said before for Dwiggins, I think Gill would have enjoyed the technology of today. He might have drawn straight into FontLab.

And exactly what did he rip off? Are you implying that he took Johnston's Underground font and made it his own? Gill was a part of the first meetings in regard to that job.

I was pretty shocked to see Günther Gerard Lange
on your list, Dan... He's not dead indeed! Talking
about the length of the list, it seems a tad unwieldy.
It looks like you didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
What's the point of making a list if you're going to
include pretty everyone?

And I REALLY feel the allusions to Gill's private life
have no merit whatsoever in the making of this list.

Could you please leave the man's personal life out of
the equation? What does it have to do with him being
included or not as a patron saint of typography?
I found Vince's reservations much more relevant to the
issue at hand.

> Well, a year does have 365 days! Just like the Catholic
Church's calendar of saints

Well, blame me for being a third generation atheist for not
being too well informed on everything pertaining saints
'n stuff. My bad, you make absolute sense in this context.