The memoir traces the author's life from childhood curiosity and early hand-press experiments through formal art training and the founding of a small press, to a wide-ranging career as designer, printer, publisher and art director in magazines and advertising. It describes his experiments with American colonial type and a populist impulse to bring quality design into mass media, as well as interludes working for the stage, cinema and as an author. Interwoven are reflections on creative influence, professional risks, and a later-period perspective on legacy and younger practitioners.