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Hello Typophiles
Does anybody have some basic biographical information about Joel Kaden, designer of the light and medium weights of ITC American Typewriter in 1974 ? Thank you very much.

Check the "Best Answer" reply at this link for more info:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061109142243AAbj7h8

HTH

I've already tried it, I'm afraid — two of the links are dead, one is irrelevant, and the last one (to the Linotype website) doesn't bring much… But thank you anyway.

I'm sure you've found that there was a Joel Kaden, born Feb 12, 1914, SSN issued in New York State, who died in Orlando, FL on July 12, 2003.

Some of the genealogy sites (most with 3 days to two weeks free one-time trial access) indicate that they have more information. At least one site indicated that there was an obituary in the Orlando Sentinel, but at the newspaper's site I did a search for the name with a date range of all of 2003 and it found nothing.

No, actually, I hadn't found that — this is definitely a lead and I will investigate that. Thank you very much.
St.

PS : if this is the man, he would have been 60 when he designed American Typewriter. Amazing.

From what I've found, he worked with ITC's Tony Stan on American Typewriter, who lived from 1917-1987 or 1988, similar ages, which of course proves nothing.

Can you imagine these two sixtysomethings plotting American Typewriter ? Funny.

Why do you seem so astounded that people past their 20's can accomplish something?

It's definitely not what I meant : my idea was more that the whimsical qualities of American Typewriter are not readily associated with old, seasoned professionals. But those were the 1970s, so who knows ?

And you don't think that seasoned professionals like George Burns, Groucho Marx, Don Rickles, Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller, and on and on can have and professionally use and capitalize their whimsical qualities?

Better Betty White than the examples cited.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/betty-white-snl-muffin-vi_n_570...

In fact, American Typewriter is pretty sophisticated. I couldn’t imagine a novice type designer working on it.
Besides this, I think I will more or less start doing something good when (and if) I get older (I am 43).

My father says a man's 40s is his golden age. But I feel I've mostly wasted the first 4 years of those...

hhp

You have wasted too much time on Typophile, that goes for sure! LOL

But I've learned so much, and not just about fonts but people too...

hhp

I was kidding… :-)

You might have been kidding but there is truth in it! :-/

hhp