William Addison Dwiggins

Dwiggins finished his sans serif type – named Metroblack™ – in less than a year. Its originality lay in the retention of oldstyle forms of letters such as a, e and g. This was also its flaw. Mergenthaler’s customers clamored for a face that was closer to the popular Futura®. Dwiggins was asked to design alternate characters for A, G, J, M, N, V, W, a, e, g, v, and w. The revised face was dubbed Metroblack no. 2 and issued in 1931. It became a success.

While he was designing Metroblack Dwiggins was also working on other faces, including a modelled sans serif and a “contemporary” roman. The modelled sans serif was quickly abandoned but the contemporary roman eventually became Electra™ (1935), Dwiggins’ response to Poliphilus™, Goudy™ Old Style and other soft, antiquarian types. It had electricity, sparks, and energy like “metal shavings coming off a lathe”. Its italic, a sloped roman inspired by the theories of Eldorado (1953) and, posthumously, Falcon (1961). The rest remained “experimentals”.



Fig. 1: Paste-up of Metro letters. Undated but probably Spring 1929.
Fig. 2: Lowercase script letters for Pictorial Review typeface 1934. The letters were assembled as paste-ups for headline use.
Fig. 3: Detail of text setting of script typeface for Underwood Typewriter Company 1932.
Fig. 4: Front cover of Clothes, a magazine published by Wm. Filene’s Sons, the Boston department store (1929). Stencil illustration and lettering by William Addison Dwiggins.