Matthew Carter
"I always used to dread having to explain to a stranger what I do for a living," says Matthew Carter a world leader in type design. Matthew Carter was born in London England in 1937 and his father was also a typographer. He grew up in London and eventually went to school at the Charterhouse located in the UK. He then planned on attending Oxford College for English however, after graduating high school he was advised to take a year off because of his young age. It was at this moment that changed the course of Matthew Carter’s life.
Between his year off and returning to school, his father got him an internship at Enschede printing house in the Netherlands. When arriving he began to work in the type foundry with Paul Radisch a punch cutter. He stayed the whole year alongside Radisch, instead of jumping around to different people in the Enschede printing house, learning the ways of punch cutting and metal type. When it came time for Carter to go back to school he decided that English was not for him, and type design was his calling.
He spent a while longer in the Netherlands punch cutting type and learning how to design his own types. It was here that helped him build the basis for the rest of his career. He eventually moved to London, England in 1959 to design type. For six years Cater worked designing typefaces for customers of Crosfield Electronics' Photon machine. Eventually, he was hired by Mike Parker in 1965 to work for Linotype. Matthew Carter packed his bags and then moved to New York. "Mike realized there was an opportunity to develop new faces for photocomposition, after most of the metal type library had been converted to film. We planned to consider whether there were any classes of type that had been impossible to make as Linotype matrices, but which might be made as film fonts. Mike hired me as an in-house type designer to develop these new faces for Linofilm. Snell Roundhand was a good example of such a face, a celebration of the fact that you could make a steeply sloped or joining script with the liberating technology of photo composition." Matthew Carter was working with Linotype for quite a while and it was Monotype and Linotype that dominated the typeface world.
Matthew Carter continued to design new typefaces for Linofilm for six years where he then moved back to London and freelanced, still working with Linotype. It was at this time that the market was beginning to change more digitally and opened a whole new field of design for typographers. Matthew Carter, along with three other Linotype associates left linotype to create the company Bitstream. Bitstream was the first independent American company to manufacture digital type. During his years with Bitstream he designed an early font for printers. Matthew Carter when asked about Bitstream was quoted saying, "We started Bitstream, based on the idea that these new and exciting digital-imaging companies were emerging, and they needed type which they couldn't get from the traditional sources. Bitstream was set up as a source of type to all companies. I spent about 11 years there. Almost all of my time was spent in meetings about sales and marketing and other business issues rather than actually designing. I did, in fact, only produce one new type design, Charter, during my whole time there. I found, like many ageing designers, I was spending a lot of time moaning that my life was spent in meetings and not designing. One morning I woke up realizing that there was something I could do about this -leave and set up my own design company -so that's what Cherie [Cone] and I did. By 1991 we saw there was enough of a market to sustain a new, small, type foundry, and Carter & Cone was incorporated in 1992."
Matthew Carter to this day still works at Carter and Cone and they dominate the fields in digital typography. But what makes Matthew Carter such an important figure in Typography? It probably has to do with his amazing font design or maybe it’s his incredible resume. “At 65, he is the elder statesman of type design, as well as one of its most skilled technical innovators.” It was when Cater and Cone created a business together that he became a big deal in digital type. He created fonts such as Miller, Sohia, Mantinia, and Big Caslon. And has worked with companies such as Microsoft and Apple on typefaces for their user-interfaces. One of Carter’s most famous fonts is Verdana, which is a font given away free on Microsoft and Apple computers.
How did Verdana come about? "It began with someone putting a version of Windows in front of Steve Balmer -and him saying that it looks just like the previous versions, and couldn't we change the font? The previous font was MS Sans, designed by the Windows engineers at Microsoft, which had served them as a system font from the early days.” It was this question that opened up the job for Matthew Carter. The idea of having a new font for the system opened up areas for font on every text box, window, menu and everything else. Also with this thought Microsoft got the idea to own more than one typeface. Carter says this is because the royalty checks that they were sending out for fonts were huge and they just needed to own fonts. Another reason he gave was, "Eventually they had the altruistic idea that by producing a small number of screen optimized typefaces and giving them away, then they would improve the experience people had in using their applications (and, of course, other people's applications as well)."
So now that the demand was needed for a computer font, Carter began to work. “The whole argument for a screen font is that screens are so coarse compared with print. The spatial resolution of monitor screens has barely moved in all this time. Microsoft told me that no one could predict when a high-resolution affordable screen was coming our way -they were up against a physical barrier.” It was the call for a screen font that led Carter to designing Verdana. “The art of screen-font design is really facing up to the fact that it is never going to be perfect -all the time while working on two versions of a bitmap character, I would look at them and not think either was right, rather than asking, which is the least bad? You are always making these practical compromises in screen-font design.”
Along with being a pioneer in on screen type, his resume also includes metal typesetting, photo setting, and working through the digital revolution. It was is innovative type that named him a Royal Designer for Industry in 1981. When Matthew Carter was asked about the differences in type design from the old metal type to new digital type he was quoted saying, “Once, the making of type was almost like a secret society: there was the mystique of being a punch-cutter and type-maker. Then it became quite an industrial process and Monotype and Linotype seemed to rule the world in composition terms: if they didn't make a typeface then it wasn't going to be made. Now, there's this incredible blossoming, where it seems as if everybody can be a type designer if they want to.”
Matthew Carter has designed quite a few typefaces including bell centennial, big caslon, big figgins, cascade script, charter, elephant, fenway, ITC Galliard, gando, Georgia, mantinia, miller, Monticello, nina, Olympian, rocky, shelly script, snell roundhand, skia, Sophia, Tahoma, verdana, Vincent, Wrigley, and meiryo. One of his most difficult projects was in 1974. “AT&T asked Carter, who was working for Mergenthaler Linotype at the time, to create the smallest legible type that could be printed on low-grade paper. Carter's creation, Bell Centennial, has notches at each right angle to prevent ink blotting. The font also has flat, short curves on the sides of g and s in order to increase the white space in the characters and make them more legible.” Along with the difficult task of bell centennial his fonts have been featured in sports illustrated, Yale, the royal academy, numerous newspapers, apple, and Microsoft. "He is not an artist or experimentalist. He is interpreting conventional forms, and his genius is to take the classical, the traditions of typography, and bring them into the 21st century without seeming trendy. He has a knack for continuing the continuum."
As one can see Matthew Carter is among the best in typeface design. Once starting in metal punch cutting as an internship and eventually moving on through several work environments with several medias Matthew Carter has now become an innovative type designer. From designing on screen fonts to the smallest legible type that could be printed on low-grade paper for Bell Centennial, Matthew Carter has definitely left a name in the type industry. Steven Heller a design critic and graphic artist was quoted saying, “Matthew is the quintessential craftsman.” He definitely deserves to be on the list for this project. "If the reader is conscious of the type, it's almost always a problem," Carter says. Letters on a page should "provide a seamless passage of the author's thoughts into the reader's minds with as much sympathy, style, and congeniality as possible."
Bibliography’
Typographically Speaking: the art of Matthew Carter
Mahan, Rachel. "Titan of Type." Psychology Today oct 41 (2008): 14-14.
Bennett, Jessica. "Just Go To Helvetica." Newsweek 7 Apr. 2008: 54-54.
Esterson, S. A Life in Type (Part One) [Interview with Matthew Carter]. Creative Review v. 25 no. 4 (April 2005) p. 42-5
Esterson, S. A Life in Type (Part Two) [Interview with Matthew Carter]. Creative Review v. 25 no. 4 (May 2005) p. 44-5
Boser, U. A Man of Letters [M. Carter]. U.S. News & World Report v. 135 no. 6 (September 1 2003) p. 44-6
Johnston, A. Scotch and water. Print (New York, N.Y.) v. 52 no. 5 (September/October 1998) p. 48+
Designing Typefaces
PART B:
Some of many fonts Matthew Carter Designed: bell centennial, big caslon, big figgins, cascade script, charter, elephant, fenway, ITC Galliard, gando, Georgia, mantinia, miller, Monticello, nina, Olympian, rocky, shelly script, snell roundhand, skia, Sophia, Tahoma, verdana, Vincent, Wrigley, and meiryo.
Verdana:
Clasification: humanist sans-serif Typeface
Verdana was designed to be readable at small sizes on a computer screen
Lack of serifs, large x-height, wide proportions, loose letter-spacing, large counters, 1 has a horizontal base and a hook. Very legiable. No difference in line weight.
PART C:
Verdana was created in 1996 which was designated the International year of the Eradication of Poverty. It was also a year of natural disasters. Bill Clintion was elected. One of the worst blizzards in American history hits the eastern states, killing more than 100 people. Philadelphia, PA received a record 30.7 inches of snowfall. January 20 - Yasser Arafat is re-elected president of the Palestinian Authority. The first version of the Java programming language is released. The Supreme Court of the United States rules (Romer v. Evans) against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals. As Iraq continues to refuse inspectors access to a number of sites, the U.S. fails in its attempt to build support for military action against Iraq in the UN Security Council. The Nintendo 64 video game system is released in Japan. The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, July 27 - The Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics kills 1 and injures 111. Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales, are formally divorced at the High Court of Justice in London. Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales is restyled Diana, Princess of Wales. 1996- hugo boss prize was created for artists. Pop art was going on.
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