Will Ransom

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Will Ransom (1878 – 24 May 1955) was an American

private presses
.

Open Shutters, a poetry collection by Oliver Jenkins, published by Will Ransom in 1922

Youth and early career

"Printing" by William Morris, as reprinted by the Village Press, run by Will Ransom and Frederic Goudy, c. 1903

Born in

W.A. Dwiggins, and Frederic Goudy. Later that year, Ransom and Goudy founded the Village Press in Park Ridge, Illinois.[2] After an unprofitable year of operation, Ransom ceded sole proprietorship to Goudy, and for the next nine years, took work as a bookkeeper. In 1911 he married Helen Ruhman, a piano teacher. They had one child, a daughter, Frances Rose.[1]

Design career

A sample advertisement made in the typeface Parsons from an ATF specimen book

Encouraged by his wife, Ransom again tried his hand at design, setting up shop as a freelance artist, designing advertisements for both

Carson Pirie Scott and Marshall Field's department stores and the Rock Island Rail Road, as well as books for several publishers. At this point he designed his famous typeface, Parsons, which he named for I.R. Parsons, an advertising manager for Carson's department store. The face was an immediate success, not only popular with printers, and used in all of Carson's advertisements for many years, but was among the most frequently used faces in motion picture titles and captions.[1]

He was credited by C.J. Bulliet, Editor of the art magazine for the Chicago Evening Post and later art critic of the Chicago Daily News, of having introduced (in 1923) Helen West Heller to woodcutting, after which she went on to become one of the world's foremost practitioners of that field.

Maker of books

In 1921 Ransom began publishing under the imprint of Will Ransom, Maker of Books. These volumes of fine printing were designed and decorated by Ransom, printed on paper made by Dard Hunter, and generally well regarded. The publishing venture proved unprofitable, however, and was abandoned in 1925.[1]

Later career

After again freelancing for a period, Ransom became director of typography at the Faithorn Company. In 1927, Ransom began writing a series on private presses for

Melbert Cary gave him a job in New York with the American Institute of Graphic Arts supervising the celebration of the 500th anniversary of printing. After this job terminated, he took work designing books for the Limited Editions Club and for Little and Ives. In 1941 Ransom became art editor for the University of Oklahoma Press. This last was his most satisfying position, as it allowed him to design books, and to continue his work on bibliography.[3]

Books

  • Private Presses and their Books,
    R.R. Bowker
    , N.Y.C., 1929
  • The first days of the Village Press: extracts from the diary of Will Ransom,
    Press of the Woolly Whale
    , N.Y.C., 1937

Typefaces

References

  • Will Ransom's papers and correspondence are in the archives of the Newberry Library.
  1. ^
    R.R. Bowker Company
    , New York & London, 1972, pp. 103-115
  2. ISBN 0-8109-1035-7
    , p. 51
  3. ^ Wells, James M., Will Ransom and Rollins, Carl Purlington American Type Designers and Their Work. in Print, V. 4, #1.
  4. ISBN 0-938768-34-4
    ., p. 247

External links
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