The University of California is an 'old-style' serif typeface, one inspired by the styles of printing popular before the late eighteenth century.

Intended for fine book printing, the design has a delicate grace and strokes that alternate between thick and thin.

It was finished just before a fire that destroyed Goudy's workshop, engraving machine and plan drawings, and Goudy noted in his book that it was lucky that he had posted off finished work to Monotype to use as a basis for making punches for their hot metal typesetting system, allowing some letters to be redrawn from patterns.

[6] Contemporary trends in graphic design saw a movement away from Goudy's love of warm, organic and rounded serif fonts, in favor crisper designs, such as sharp geometric sans-serif fonts and harder, more robust serifs such as Monotype's Times New Roman.

"[2] Walter Tracy in his book Letters of Credit was unimpressed with the design, commenting "the design is not particularly notable, but it is pleasant enough to read at 12 point and smaller...in the larger sizes some peculiarities show themselves: C, E, F and T look unfinished, s is too light, and in italic the ball terminals in s look at odds with the other capitals, though they are acceptable in the lowercase s." For a name, Goudy preferred 'Berkeley' after the press's location, which, he thought more 'aristocratic' than the alternative proposal of 'Californian'.

After the original type was commissioned for private use, 'California' was released publicly by different companies, first in 1958, by Lanston Monotype as 'Californian' and then under the name of 'Berkeley Old Style' by ITC.