ITC Goudy Sans® Font Field Guide

Best Practices

While typefaces with strong personalities have limitations, few applications are outside the range of ITC Goudy Sans. It’s a good choice for advertising copy, promotional material, catalogs, brochures and even long form print and on-screen text copy.

Family

Four weights of regular designs – each with a complementary italic

Font Facts

• Goudy’s only commercial sans serif design.


• Goudy said of the typeface, “I attempted to give to my type a definite expression of freedom and a personal quality not always found in this kind of letter.”

Roots

Frederic Goudy created the three designs of heavy, light and light italic for metal typesetting in the 1920s. Then, many years later, Compugraphic Corp. revived Goudy’s original work for photocomposition. In the process, three more faces were added to the family. International Typeface Corporation (ITC) re-released the design under a license from Compugraphic in 1986. ITC took the opportunity to enlarge the family again to four weights with corresponding italics.

Legibility

Distinctive characters, such as the bowl and loop g and diagonal crossbar e aid legibility. Open counters help define characters, and have a strong influence on ease of recognition. Open apertures also aid in small text and on-screen legibility.

Download a pdf version of the ITC Goudy Sans® font field guide and view the ITC Goudy Sans® font family.