Rudolph Ruzicka

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Rudolph Ruzicka (29 June 1883 – 20 July 1978) was a

In 1910 Ruzicka set up his own shop at 954 Lexington Avenue in New York City.[2] He received his first major art commission from System magazine. Many exhibitions followed, including such venues as the Societe de la Gravure, Paris, the Grolier Club, and the Century Association, New York. In 1916 Ruzicka built a house and a workshop in Dobbs Ferry, New York.^[2]

In 1935 Ruzicka was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and in that same year began work with the Typographic Development staff at Mergenthaler Linotype Company, for which he was to produce typeface families.

In 1948 he moved to Massachusetts, and eventually he settled in Vermont.

Over the years, D. B. Updike and Ruzicka collaborated on a number of well-respected book designs, including Newark and the

• Lake Informal, designed for Linotype in 1935, though matrices were evidently never cut, as there is no record of this type having ever actually been cast in metal. Design later used for so-called "digital type" in 1993.
• Ruzicka Freehand, proposed designs made for Linotype in 1939 and never made into actual type. A digital knock-off of this design was made in 1993 by Ann Chaisson and Mark Altman.
• Fairfield series
  • Fairfield + Italic (Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1940). Perhaps twenty digital variants of this face have been designed by Alex Kaczun for Linotype.
  • Fairfield Medium + Italic (Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1949). A digital knock-off of this has been issued by Bitstream as Transitional 751.
• Primer + Italic (
  Century Schoolbook. A digital knock-off of this has been issued by Bitstream
  as Century 751.

• List of AIGA medalists

External links

• The Papers of Rudolph Ruzicka in the Dartmouth College Library
• Biography of Rudolph Ruzicka

References

• Edward Connery Lathem, Rudolph Ruzicka: Speaking Reminiscently. New York: Grolier Club, 1986. (Memoirs)
• Edward Connery Lathem and Elizabeth French Lathem (eds), D.B.U. and R.R.: Selected Extracts from Correspondence between Daniel Berkeley Updike and Rudolph Ruzicka, 1908 to 1941. New York: American Printing History Association, 1997.