Frederic W. Goudy Award

The Frederic W. Goudy Award & Lecture were established in 1969 by funds donated to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust in memory of Mrs. Cary's late husband, Melbert B. Cary, Jr., a typographer, type importer, fine printer, book collector, and president of AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts). The award was named after illustrious American type designer Frederic W. Goudy, a friend and business associate of Mr. Cary.

In the Preface to the book Twenty Years of the Frederic W. Goudy Award (Press of the Good Mountain, RIT 1988), Alexander Lawson, RIT Cary Professor emeritus and 1979 recipient of the Goudy Award, wrote:

"The Cary Trustees also funded an annual Frederic W. Goudy Award to be given to an outstanding practitioner in the field of typography. The person would deliver a Goudy Lecture and meet with students in class and in groups, thus providing an opportunity for informal contact with a distinguished graphic arts figure."

In the "Foreword" to the same book, Mark Guldin, then Cary Professor, former chair of the School of Printing and former Dean of the RIT College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, wrote:

"Down through the years, we have always tried to choose those designers and typophiles for the Award who have that thread of attachment to Frederic W. Goudy, those who have worked with the design of typefaces and those who have produced designs cradled in the traditional values of Gutenberg, Jenson, Aldus, Baskerville, and Bodoni. Goudy cherished those traditional values."

The Goudy Award and Lecture was given annually from 1969 to 1995. It was discontinued in 1996 when the institute diverted the funding to other purposes. It was revived in 2012, discontinued again, and revived again in 2015. Printing and typography RIT alumni and friends of the Cary Collection hope it shall continue annually.

In the first years of the Goudy Award, some of the honorees had known Fred Goudy personally, thereby establishing a direct link with the eponymous past. Although that generation of typographers has passed on, along with much of the analog typographic technology and industry that Goudy and Cary were familiar with, many of Goudy's typefaces, long admired and cherished by typographic aficionados, live on and remain popular in digital formats, while new typeface designs by several Goudy Award honorees have become widely popular in digital form.

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