Douglas Crawford McMurtrie

Douglas Crawford McMurtrie (1888-1944) is best known for his work as a bibliographer and typographer. McMurtrie spent his time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology being the college newspaper’s managing editor, designing the yearbook, and corresponding for three Boston papers. McMurtrie left school,  and in 1909, got a job with the Pittsburg Typhoid Fever Commission as a statistician. McMurtrie’s responsibilities shifted as he began “producing its printed matter,” and he eventually became a “free-lance designer and printing broker” in New York.

Throughout his life, McMurtrie was the director of the Columbia University Printing Office and president of the Arbor Press. McMurtrie designed typfaces, contributed to the designing of New Yorker magazine, and wrote Modern Typography and Layout and The Golden Book. McMurtrie also edited the American Journal of Care for Cripples, and during World War I, was the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men director.

"Douglas Crawford McMurtrie."Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 3: 1941-1945. American Council of Learned Societies, 1973. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004.