Matthew Coffin Butterick (born November 15, 1970) is an American typographer, lawyer, writer, and computer programmer. He received the 2012 Golden Pen Award from the

Legal Writing Institute The Legal Writing Institute (LWI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving legal communication, building the discipline of legal writing, and improving the status of legal writing faculty across the United States. The Institute currently h ...

for his book ''Typography for Lawyers'', which started as a website in 2008 based on his experience as a practicing attorney. He has worked for The Font Bureau and founded his own website design company, Atomic Vision (purchased by Red Hat in 1999). Expanding ''Typography for Lawyers'', Butterick published ''Practical Typography'' as a "web-based book" in July 2013. Butterick graduated with a BA in visual and environmental studies from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. He later earned a JD at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

and was admitted to the

State Bar of California The State Bar of California is California's official attorney licensing agency. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, prescribing appropriate disciplin ...

in 2007. As of January 2023, Butterick is currently serving as co-counsel in multiple class action lawsuits against AI companies Github Copilot, Stable Diffusion, as well as another class action lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt.

Typefaces

Butterick's typeface designs include:

For Font Bureau

* Wessex (1993), transitional text serif inspired by Bulmer and

Caledonia Caledonia (; ) was the Latin name used by the Roman Empire to refer to the part of Great Britain () that lies north of the River Forth, which includes most of the land area of Scotland. Today, it is used as a romantic or poetic name for all ...

* Herald Gothic (1993), a bevelled sans-serif * Berlin Sans (1994, part), a flared sans-serif * Hermes (1995), a blocky sans-serif loosely inspired by Berthold Block * Alix, a typewriter font

Self-released

* Equity, an updating of the 1930s body text serif design Ehrhardt. Features grades designed to suit different types of paper and printers, and separate

small caps In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technica ...

fonts intended for use in

Word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...

. * Concourse, loosely inspired by Dwiggins’ geometric sans-serif design

Metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urban ...

. Features stylistic alternates and small caps. * Triplicate, a monospaced slab serif design inspired by typewriter fonts such as the default face used in the IBM Selectric. Essentially a further development of Alix, with more variants including a proportional version and a style designed specifically for displaying code. * Advocate, a caps-only slab and sans serif design. Reminiscent of mid-century American college sports team lettering, corporate logos and

Bank Gothic Bank Gothic is a rectilinear geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders and released in 1930. The design has become popular from the late twentieth century to suggest a science-fiction, military, co ...

. Somewhat resembles an expansion of Herald Gothic. *Heliotrope, an attempt to merge the characteristics of serif and sans serif fonts into a single typeface. It draws loose inspiration from typefaces such as Optima and Albertus.

References

External links

Butterick's Practical Typography website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Butterick, Matthew Lawyers from Los Angeles American typographers and type designers American instructional writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Living people Harvard University alumni UCLA School of Law alumni People from Ann Arbor, Michigan 1970 births 21st-century American male writers