Will Ransom

Will Ransom (1878 – 24 May 1955) was an American graphic designer, letterer, typeface designer, and the foremost bibliographer of private presses.

Born in St. Louis, Michigan, Ransom grew up in Snohomish, Washington and began his career as a reporter, bookkeeper, and printer's devil for several papers in the Northwest. Long interested in design, and having printed several art books on his own, Ransom was persuaded in 1903 to study at Frank Holmes’ School of Illustration. There he joined a group of young designers including Oswald Cooper, W.A. Dwiggins, and Frederic Goudy. Later that year, Ransom and Goudy founded the Village Press in Park Ridge, Illinois. After an unprofitable year of operation, Ransom ceded sole proprietorship to Goudy, and for the next nine years, took work as a bookkeeper. In 1911 he married Helen Ruhman, a piano teacher. They had one child, a daughter, Frances Rose.

Encouraged by his wife, Ransom again tried his hand at design, setting up shop as a freelance artist, designing advertisements for both Carson Pirie Scott and Marshall Field's department stores and the Rock Island Rail Road, as well as books for several publishers. At this point he designed his famous typeface, Parsons, which he named for I.R. Parsons, an advertising manager for Carson’s department store. The face was an immediate success, not only popular with printers, and used in all of Carson’s advertisements for many years, but was among the most frequently used faces in motion picture titles and captions.

He was credited by C.J. Bulliet, Editor of the art magazine for the Chicago Evening Post and later art critic of the Chicago Daily News, of having introduced (in 1923) Helen West Heller to woodcutting, after which she went on to become one of the world's foremost practitioners of that field.

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