Metro was created to be highly readable at small point sizes, making it ideal for catalog production, maps and time tables. It can also be put to good use for directories or commercials. NIVEA used Metro as a pattern for their skin cream logo. Other fonts include Electra and Caledonia which have had wide use in the American bookmaking industry and Futura, geometrically designed and optimized for highspeed printing processes.

The term graphic designer was developed when he began working for the publishing firm of Alfred A. Knopf, where his design and new type faces revolutionized the publishing industry. Dwiggins' career as a designer of trade books began in 1926 when he designed and illustrated both the limited and trade editions of Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy, H.G. Well's The Time Machine and other author's such as Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandburg and H.L. Mencken. Each of the hundreds of books he designed carried a brief colophon on the history of the type employed and he used designs of repeated decorative units like the early printers' fleurons (flower-shaped ornaments) which were extremely popular.

Dwiggins was a book designer, illustrator, type designer, calligrapher, writer, mural painter, costume designer, sculptor, playwright, marionettes theatre connoisseur; and with characteristic flair he also restyled Harper's Magazine. William Addison Dwiggins' best type designs succesfully combined creative freedom with superb discipline.

Prior to book design, Dwiggins studied art under Frederic W. Goudy at the Frank Holme School in Chicago, then moved to Massachusetts to work with Goudy and his Village Press soon after. During his early career he supplied art to Boston advertisers making use of both his artistic and calligraphic skills. After Goudy's departure to New York, Dwiggins settled in Hingham for the rest of his life, and also maintained a design studio in Boston for a number of years.

Other fonts by Dwiggins include Conniseur, Eldorado, Stuyvesant, Winchester, Acadia, Tippecanoe, Hingham and Falcon all designed for the Mergenthaler Linotype Comapany.

William Addison Dwiggins

.b. June 19, 1880, Martinsville, Ohio

d. Dec. 25, 1956, Hingham, Mass.