Matthew carter typography biography of william
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The fonts
Roster (Wrigley)
Roster is a dramatic slab-serif display typeface, characterized by the tension of square corners in round shapes. It was adopted as a display face by Sports Illustrated under the name Wrigley. Roster’s outer shapes are large, curved rectangles, while its inner shapes have the chisel-cut tydlig förståelse of counters carved out of the surrounding letter forms.
Shelley Script
Based on English handwriting styles of the 18th and 19th centuries, Shelley Script has three increasingly elaborate styles, each named after a musical begrepp. Matthew chose Andante, Allegro, and Volante to reflect the three different moods: Andante fryst vatten the most reserved, Allegro has a few more flourishes, and Volante’s capital letters are surrounded bygd swirling strokes.
Snell Roundhand
Based on the roundhand script of Charles Snell, a formal writing style of the late 17th century, this script typeface fryst vatten often used to evoke gender, era, exclusivity, and courtesy. Its letters have
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Matthew Carter was born in London, England in 1937, son of printing historian Harry Carter. At nineteen, he went to the Netherlands, where he trained at Enschedé as a punch-cutter. From 1963, he worked as a typographic consultant to Crosfield Electronics and in 1965 moved to Mergenthaler Linotype in New York. He stayed with Linotype for the next six years and continued to freelance with the company after his return to London in 1971. Bell Centennial was completed for Linotype in 1978. Galliard, designed by Mike Parker, was finished the same year. Carter was typographic consultant to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office from 1980 to 1984. In 1981, with Mike Parker and two other colleagues, he set up Bitstream Inc. – the first American independent digital typefoundry – in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bitstream Charter (1987) was the first new design to be produced. In 1992, Carter started a new venture, Carter & Cone Type Inc., with Cherie Cone. To date, the company has produced four type
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Great Designer :: MATTHEW CARTER
MATTHEW CARTER
Typography Designer (1937-)
The most important typography designer of our time, MATTHEW CARTER (1937-) is one of the few designers whose work is used by millions of people every day. Having devoted the first half of his career to typefaces for use in print, such as Miller and Bell Centennial, he then pioneered the design of fonts for use on screen, notably Verdana for Microsoft.
After leaving school, Matthew Carter spent what was intended to be his gap year at the Enschedé type foundry at Haarlem in the Netherlands learning how to making type by hand; that is, carving the steel characters that would be punched into copper matrices for the casting of lead type. This process was more or less commercially obsolete, and most Enschedé interns spent their year working around the various departments of the printing works. Carter’s decision to remain in the type foundry gave him a peculiarly intense vocational training that wa