Virginia Howlett (born 1951 in

Edmonton Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

) is a

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

and

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

. With an MFA in Painting from

The Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatoria ...

, Howlett was one of the first designers hired into

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 1985. After writing an email to Bill Gates explaining the necessity for having designated graphic user interface designers, she built the company's first

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

design team. She led the team that designed the 3D graphic interface for

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

. She was also instrumental in starting Microsoft's corporate art collection. Working in Microsoft's typography group, she collaborated with

Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is an English type designer.A Man of Letters

to develop a number of typefaces including '' Verdana'' (which is named after her daughter, Ana). In 1996 her book ''Visual Interface Design for Windows'' was published. In it, she explains the design process and provides a number of makeovers of real-world software products. It is recognized as one of the first books to bridge the gap between artistic

product designers Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution ...

and technical

software engineers Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

. After retiring from Microsoft she returned to painting. She maintains a studio in

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

and exhibits work throughout the United States.

References

"Interview with Virginia Howlett, mother of Verdana"
Retrieved September 9, 2005.

External links

Personal Home PageMicrosoft Art Collection
*''Visual Interface Design for Windows'' () {{DEFAULTSORT:Howlett, Virginia 1951 births Living people Artists from Edmonton Artists from Seattle Businesspeople from Edmonton Businesspeople from Seattle Canadian graphic designers Canadian women graphic designers Microsoft employees School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni