the golden age of typography

“The meaningless lines or excrescences upon which so many modern designers, wthout ability to reach the higher beauties, rely, in their endeavor to conceal their lack of genius or taste, were never present in the type of the golden age of typography.”

—Frederic Goudy, The Art in Type Design, 1912; quoted in Typology: Type Design from the Victorian Era to the Digital Age by Steven Heller and Louise Fili, 1999. They add: “The golden age of which he speaks is the sixteenth century, when some of the classic ‘humanist’ faces (Bodoni, Garamond, Jensen) were introduced.”