Walter Tracy

Walter Valentine Tracy RDI (1914–1995) was an English typographer and writer and designer of books, magazines, and newspapers.

Walter Tracy was born in Islington, London and attended Shoreditch Secondary school. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to the large printing firm William Clowes as a compositor. When he had completed his apprenticeship, Tracy went to work in the design studio of The Baynard Press. During the Second World War he worked in and advertising agency as a print buyer. In 1947 he became manager of typeface development at Linotype, where he specialised in designing typefaces for newspapers, and classified advertising. His typeface Jubilee, designed to be more robust than Stanley Morison's 1931 font Times New Roman, was adopted by a number of newspapers, and his Telegraph Modern was used by the Daily Telegraph from 1969. While at Linotype he was also responsible for overseeing the development of systems for the electronic composition of Arabic.

In 1972 he was asked by The Times to design a replacement for Times New Roman. This was Times Europa which was adopted by The Times in late 1972. He retired in 1977 but still kept busy, designing many Arabic typefaces for Linotype, Letraset and Bitstream. In the same period he also designed a Hebrew font, under a pseudonym. In 1973 he was elected a Royal Designer for Industry. His papers are held at the Type Museum, London.

Walter was married to Frances Tracy for many years. They latterly lived at "Cedar Court" in Finchley, London, a Grade II listed 1920's building.

• Jubilee (1954)
• Adsans (1959)
• Maximus (1967)
• Telegraph Modern (1969)
• Times Europa (1972)
• Doric (1973)
• Telegraph Newface Bold (with Shelley Winter, 1979)
• Qadi (1979)
• Kufics (1980)
• Oasis (1985)
• Sharif (1989)
• Malik (1988)
• Medina (1989)