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 her late husband, Melbert B. Cary, Jr., a typographer, type importer, fine printer, book collector, and president of AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts).

[1] The award was named after illustrious American type designer Frederic W. Goudy, a friend and business associate of Melbert Cary.

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."

Goudy Award honorees have generally been outstanding practitioners in the field of typography, including some or all of the following professions: The work of the Goudy Award honorees reveals another, implicit criterion: they elevated the artistic, scholarly, and ethical level of typography, whether through type design, like Hermann Zapf, Gudrun Zapf-Von Hesse, Adrian Frutiger, Matthew Carter, and Kris Holmes; through the art of fine printing, like Will Carter, Henry Morris, and Giovanni Mardersteig; through artistic typography and printing in commercial publishing and graphic design, like Roderick Stinehour, Bradbury Thompson, and Robert Bringhurst; through engagement in the social issues and responsibilities of typography, like Edna Beilenson and Robert (Doc) Leslie, and through typographic education and scholarship, like Alexander Lawson, John Dreyfus, Warren Chappell, and Charles Bigelow.

Nine have received the Type Directors Club Medal (Zapf, Middleton, Leslie, Thompson, Frutiger, Craw, Benguiat, Carter, Lange).