Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British

type designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

.A Man of Letters
, U.S. News & World Report, 1 September 2003. A 2005 ''

New Yorker New Yorker or ''variant'' primarily refers to: * A resident of the State of New York ** Demographics of New York (state) * A resident of New York City ** List of people from New York City * ''The New Yorker'', a magazine founded in 1925 * '' The ...

'' profile described him as 'the most widely read man in the world' by considering the amount of text set in his commonly used fonts. Carter's career began in the early 1960s and has bridged all three major technologies used in type design: physical type, phototypesetting and digital font design, as well as the design of custom lettering. Carter's most used fonts are the classic web fonts

Verdana Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typograph ...

and

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

and the

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

interface font Tahoma, as well as other designs including Bell Centennial,

Miller A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalent ...

and

Galliard The ''galliard'' (; french: gaillarde; it, gagliarda) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance f ...

. He is the son of the English historian of printing Harry Carter (1901–1982) and cofounded

Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...

, one of the first major retailers of digital fonts. He lives in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, Massachusetts.

Early life and education

Carter grew up in London, the son of Harry Carter, a book designer and later historian of printing. His mother worked in preparing scale drawings. Although Carter had intended to get a degree in English at

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

he was advised to take a year off so he would be the same age as his contemporaries who had gone into

National Service National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The ...

Career

Enschedé

Through his father, Carter arranged to hold an internship at the Joh. Enschedé type foundry in the Netherlands for a year. An extremely long-lasting company with a long history of printing, Enschedé had a history of creating conservative but popular book typefaces. Carter studied manual

punchcutting Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould s ...

, the method used to make moulds used to cast

metal type In typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, which is lined up with others to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand with other sorts be ...

, under P. H. Rädisch. Punchcutting was a traditional artisanal approach in decline many years before the 1950s. Carter is one of the last people in Europe formally trained in the technique as a living practice. Carter enjoyed the experience, and decided to move directly into a career in graphic design and printing.

London and New York

Carter's career in type and graphic design has bridged the transition from physical metal type to digital type. Despite Carter's training in the art of traditional punchcutting, his career developed at a time when

was rapidly being displaced by phototypesetting. This reduced the cost of designing and using a wide range of typefaces, since type could be stored on reels of film rather than as blocks of expensively engraved metal. In a book on Carter's career, historian

James Mosley James Mosley (born 1935) is a retired librarian and historian whose work has specialised in the history of printing and letter design. The main part of Mosley's career has been 42 years as Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in London, whe ...

, a few years older than Carter, would write of the period of their upbringing:

The
Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
classic ontsdominated the typographical landscape ... in Britain, at any rate, they were so ubiquitous that, while their excellent quality was undeniable, it was possible to be bored by them and to begin to rebel against the bland good taste that they represented. In fact we were already aware by 1960 that they might not be around to bore us for too long. The death of metal type ... seemed at last to be happening.'

Carter eventually returned to London where he became a freelancer. By 1961 Carter was able to use the skills he acquired to cut his own version of the semi-bold typeface

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...

. An early example of his work is the masthead logo he designed for the British magazine Private Eye in May 1962, still in use. Previously the lettering had been different for the masthead of each issue; it was based on a font ('a bit of nameless juvenilia') which was never ultimately published. He also did early work for Heathrow Airport. Carter would later become the typographic advisor to

Crosfield Electronics Crosfield Electronics was a British electronics imaging company founded by John Crosfield (1915 - 2012) and Dennis Bent in 1947 to produce process imaging devices for the print industry. The firm was notable for its innovation in colour drum sc ...

, distributors of Photon phototypesetting machines. Carter designed many typefaces for Mergenthaler Linotype as well. Under Linotype, Carter created well-known typefaces including Snell Roundhand, a

script typeface Script typefaces are based upon the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting. They are generally used for display or trade printing, rather than for extended body text in the Latin alphabet. Some Greek alphabet typefaces, especially ...

and Bell Centennial, intended for use in the Bell System's phone directories and to celebrate its anniversary. Based on the work of

Robert Granjon Robert Granjon (1513-November 16, 1589/March 1590) was a French type designer and printer. He worked in Paris, Lyon, Frankfurt, Antwerp, and Rome for various printers. He is best known for having introduced the typeface Civilité and for his ita ...

a 16th century French engraver, Carter created the sharp, high-contrast family

. This matched a family interest: Carter's father in the 1950s had indexed and examined original type by Granjon at the

Plantin-Moretus Museum The Plantin-Moretus Museum ( nl, Plantin-Moretusmuseum) is a printing museum in Antwerp, Belgium which focuses on the work of the 16th-century printers Christophe Plantin and Jan Moretus. It is located in their former residence and printing esta ...

in Antwerp, and Carter had visited him several times to observe his progress. Carter's adaptation, more intended for display use than for body text, included some eccentricities of Granjon's original design, producing a result unlike many previous revivals of typefaces from the period. Carter wrote of his father's research that it had helped to demonstrate "that the finest collection of printing types made '' y_Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin">Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) [along with] Plantin's accounts and inventories which names the cutters of his types." Carter also advised IBM as an independent consultant in the 1980s.

Bitstream

Matthew Carter, RIT NandE Vol18Num3 1986 Oct9 Complete

In 1981, Carter and his colleague Mike Parker created Bitstream Inc. This digital type foundry was one of the largest suppliers of type before its acquisition by Monotype in 2012. The company however did receive extensive criticism for its strategy of cheaply offering digitisations of pre-existing typefaces that it had not designed, often under alternative names (for example,

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration w ...

as 'Dutch 801'). While technically not illegal, this selling of large numbers of typefaces on CD would be described by font designer John Hudson as "one of the worst instances of piracy in the history of type". In his role at Bitstream, Carter designed typefaces, such as Charter, and commissioned others such as Iowan Old Style from

John Downer Sir John William Downer, KCMG, KC (6 July 1843 – 2 August 1915) was an Australian politician who served two terms as Premier of South Australia, from 1885 to 1887 and again from 1892 to 1893. He later entered federal politics and served as ...

. Bitstream would ultimately be acquired by Monotype in 2012.

Carter and Cone

Carter left Bitstream in 1991 and in 1992 formed the Carter & Cone type foundry with Cherie Cone. Carter's recent typefaces have been published by a range of retailers including ITC,

Font Bureau The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The foundry is one of the leading designers of typefaces, specializing in type designs for magazine and newspaper publishers. History ...

and

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

, often in collaboration with Carter and Cone, together with his custom designs created for companies such as Microsoft. Of Carter's recent fonts, the serif web font

is inspired by

Scotch Roman Scotch Roman is a class of typefaces popular in the early nineteenth century, particularly in the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom. These typefaces were modeled on a design known as Pica No. 2 from the Edinburgh foundry of ...

designs of the 19th century. It was based on designs for a print typeface in the same style Carter was working on when contacted by Microsoft; this would be released under the name

some years later. Speaking in 2013 about the development of Georgia and Miller, Carter said, "I was familiar with Scotch romans, puzzled by the fact that they were once so popular ... and then they disappeared completely." Many of Carter's fonts were created to address specific technical challenges, for example those posed by early computers. Charter was created to use a minimal number of design elements to fit in a small memory space on early computers, a problem that had expired even before he finished the design. The bold versions of Verdana and Georgia are also unusually bold, almost black. Carter noted that, "Verdana and Georgia ... were all about binary

bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: t ...

s: every pixel was on or off, black or white ... The bold versions of Verdana and Georgia are bolder than most bolds, because on the screen, at the time we were doing this in the mid-1990s, if the stem wanted to be thicker than one pixel, it could only go to two pixels. That is a bigger jump in weight than is conventional in print series." Some of Carter's early font digitisations would later be revisited: Monotype released an expanded version of Charter and

expanded versions of Georgia, Verdana, Big Caslon and others. Earlier in his career, Bell Centennial was created to be legible in telephone directories, even when printed on cheap paper at small sizes. Carter's only font to bear his name is

Carter Sans Carter Sans is a typeface by Matthew Carter, in collaboration with Dan Reynolds. In style, it is described as a "hybrid sans-serif" or "Sans-serif#Classification, humanist stressed sans" ("flare serif", "glyphic serif"), as it does not have serifs ...

. It is a 'glyphic' sans-serif with flaring towards the end of each letter. It was inspired by

Albertus Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Later canonised as a Catholic saint, he was known during his li ...

, a popular British font created by

Berthold Wolpe Berthold Ludwig Wolpe (29 October 1905 – 5 July 1989) was a German calligrapher, typographer, type designer, book designer and illustrator. He was born into a Jewish family at Offenbach near Frankfurt, emigrated to England soon after the ...

for Monotype. Carter knew Wolpe early in his career and helped digitise one of his less-known fonts for a 1980 retrospective of his work. HWT Van Lanen

One of Carter's more unusual projects was a font, Van Lanen, for the

Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum The Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum was founded in 1999 and is located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, United States. The museum is run by the Two Rivers Historical Society. It is dedicated to the preservation, study, production and printing of ...

. A 'Latin'-style wedge serif font, it was released both in digital form and

wood type In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was l ...

. In an article on it, Carter noted that it has been "50 years since a type of my design had been in a physical form that I could hold in my hand." Yale University logo

Carter has taught on

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

's graphic design programme since 1976. He also designed the university's corporate fonts,

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

, at the request of John Gambell, the University Printer. Carter has said that this was the first time in designing a typeface that he focused more on capital than lowercase letters, since he knew that on the building signs the lettering would be in capitals. Carter wrote that:

The signs, whether free-standing or attached to walls, reminded me of inscriptions, and this led me to think about the inscriptional origins of Roman caps and the everlasting problem of reconciling capitals with lowercase. For me, the moment when the first true synthesis occurred was in the type of ''De Aetna''. This led me in turn to the
Beinecke Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. Es ...
to pore over their copy of the book and its type – the archetype of Roman type for me.

Awards

Carter has won numerous awards for his contributions to typography and design, including an '' honoris causa,''

Doctorate of Humane Letters The degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (; DHumLitt; DHL; or LHD) is an honorary degree awarded to those who have distinguished themselves through humanitarian and philanthropic contributions to society. The criteria for awarding the degree differ ...

from the

Art Institute of Boston Lesley University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. As of 2018-19 Lesley University enrolled 6,593 students (2,707 undergraduate and 3,886 graduate). History ...

, an AIGA medal in 1995, the TDC Medal from the Type Directors Club in 1997, and the 2005 SOTA Typography Award. A retrospective of his work, "Typographically Speaking, The Art of Matthew Carter," was exhibited at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in December 2002. This retrospective is featured in the documentary, "Typographically Speaking: A Conversation With Matthew Carter." In 2010, Carter was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, otherwise known as a "

genius Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabili ...

" grant. On 26 May 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Design Awards at the White House. He is a member of

Alliance Graphique Internationale Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) is a club of the world's leading graphic artists and designers. There are 527 members from 43 countries. Its members have been collectively responsible for the identity design of most of the world's top co ...

(AGI), has served as chairman of

ATypI The ATypI () or Association Typographique Internationale (the International Typography Association) is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to typography and type design. The primary activity of the association is an annual fall confe ...

, is a member of the board of directors of the Type Directors Club, and is an ''ex officio'' member of the board of directors of the

Society of Typographic Aficionados A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societi ...

(SOTA). Some of Carter's designs are in the collection of the St. Bride Printing Library in London. Carter was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...

(CBE) in the

2020 Birthday Honours The Queen's Birthday Honours for 2020 are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded ...

for services to typography and design.

Typefaces

Matthew Carter's typefaces include the following: * Alisal * Bell Centennial *

Big Caslon Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London, or inspired by his work. Caslon worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal ty ...

* Big Figgins * Big Moore *

*Cascade Script * Charter *

Cochin Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...

(adaptation) *

Elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae ...

(later republished as Big Figgins) *Fenway * DTL Flamande * ITC Galliard *Gando *

* Helvetica Compressed * Helvetica Greek *Mantinia *

Meiryo is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font for Vista on Japanese systems. Meiryo was created out of a growing ...

(Latin range) *

Monticello Monticello ( ) was the primary plantation of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, V ...

*Nina *Olympian *Rocky * Roster * Shelley Script * Sitka * Snell Roundhand * Skia *Sophia *Stilson * Tahoma * Van Lanen *

*Vincent *Walker * Wilson Greek *

Besides Carter's commercially released fonts, many of his designs have been privately commissioned for companies for their own use. These include work for ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

'', ''The New York Times'', ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

'', and ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

''. Some of these fonts would later be released commercially. An example of this is Roster, which is based on a smaller family created under the name of ''Wrigley'' for ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...

'' magazine, and Stilson, originally proprietary to ''

'' and named 'Postoni'. Seven of Carter's typefaces are in the permanent collection of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

. MoMA acquired these in 2011. The typefaces were displayed in the MoMA's ''Standard Deviations'' exhibition of 2011–12. The seven typefaces are Bell Centennial, Big Caslon, ITC Galliard, Mantinia, Miller, Verdana and Walker.

References

* ''Eye'', No. 11, Vol. 3, edited by

Rick Poynor Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, graphic design, typography, and visual culture. Career He began as a general visual arts journalist, working on ''Blueprint'' magazine in London. After founding ''Eye'' magazine, which he edited from 19 ...

, Wordsearch Ltd, 1993. * , p. 62.

External links

MyFonts

Type Designer Showcase biography at Monotype Imaging

Designing Modern Britain exhibition biography
* *
TED Talk: Matthew Carter: My life in typefaces (TED2014)

Mathew Carter in conversation with Erik Spiekermann, Eye No. 11

Graphic Content: Carter Sans
by Steven Heller, New York Times, 2 February 2011
Matthew Carter
– collection of material by Luc Devroye
Carter & Cone
( Luc Devroye's website)
Carter & Cone
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Matthew 1937 births AIGA medalists English typographers and type designers English emigrants to the United States MacArthur Fellows Designers from London British letter cutters Living people Commanders of the Order of the British Empire