Doyald Young | Fount of fonts, 84
Doyald Young, 84, a logotype designer and teacher whose three monographs on letterforms and alphabets, including the provocatively titled Dangerous Curves , reintroduced classical design principles to designers at a time when inelegant lettering was in vogue, died Feb. 28 in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
Doyald Young, 84, a logotype designer and teacher whose three monographs on letterforms and alphabets, including the provocatively titled
Dangerous Curves
, reintroduced classical design principles to designers at a time when inelegant lettering was in vogue, died Feb. 28 in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
The cause was complications of heart surgery, said the designer Petrula Vrontikis, a colleague.
Type designers are usually invisible to the public, even when the typefaces they create are given their own name (as three of Mr. Young's were). But Mr. Young, known in design circles for his elegant curvilinear faces rooted in 16th- and 17th-century verities, built a reputation during his 30 years of teaching at Art Center College of Design (formerly the Art Center School) in Pasadena, Calif., as a mentor of typographers and graphic designers.
When digital programs such as Fontographer made it easy for anyone with a computer to create typefaces, many of them purposefully inelegant, he advocated a high level of craftsmanship that he believed had been lost.
He gave his name to Young Gallant, Young Baroque, and Young Finesse. He also designed bold display faces such as ITC Eclat, a so-called fat-face script, which was used for titles by Comedy Central and the Queen Latifah movie Beauty Shop. - N.Y. Times News Service
