Fred­eric W. Goudy found his call­ing late in life:

At 40, this short, plump, pink­ish, and puck­ish gen­tle­man kept books for a Chicago real­tor, and con­sid­ered him­self a fail­ure. Dur­ing the next 36 years, start­ing almost from scratch at an age when most men are per­ma­nently set in their cho­sen voca­tions, he cut 113 fonts of type, thereby cre­at­ing more usable faces than did the seven great­est inven­tors of type and books, from Guten­berg to Gara­mond. Now 76, he is the dean of twentieth-​century designers.