William addison dwiggins work from home

Bill Dwiggins (1880–1956), type designer, book designer, typographer, calligrapher, writer, artist & puppeteer is famously the first American to call himself a graphic designer.

Philip Hofer writing in The Dolphin, 1935, called him “America’s only truly modern typographer, and by far her outstanding book decorator and calligrapher.” Dwiggins was not a traditional fine press person, having outgrown the Arts & Crafts furrow of his mentor, Fred Goudy, soon after Goudy left the village of Hingham, Mass, for New York in 1905.

Dwiggins, who came from Martinsville, Ohio, decided to stay and work as an advertising designer & typographer for Houghton-Mifflin and the Merrymount Press of Boston. 

There’s a great anecdote where Goudy runs into D.

B. Updike of the Merrymount Press at a Society of Printers dinner, and says, "Why don’t you hire me, after all I taught Dwiggins everything he knows." Updike replies, "Tha