Typographer Matthew Carter - Essay Example

Typographer Matthew Carter Matthew Carter, ‘born in 1937 in London is a famous typography designer who has dedicated his life in the development of typography creating a series of fonts that are being used on a daily basis by people around the world. Carter developed his skills in typography designing working with his father who was ‘a typographer, a book designer and a type historian’ [1]. Moreover, ‘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’ [1].

Although the process followed in the above type foundry was considered to be anachronistic, this activity helped Carter to create his own style in typography design (a sector that became soon the centre of Carter’s work in typography). During his visit in New York approximately in 1960 Carter had the chance to study the work of Herb Lubalin and Milton Glaser. It was the work of these two typographic designers that caused the transition of Carter from a ‘type-maker to a type designer’ [1].

It should be noticed that in New York Carter ‘joined Mergenthaler Linotype and began developing fonts that would exploit the new photo-typesetting technologies’ [2]. It was there that Carter’s skills in ‘calligraphic and script renderings’ [2] were revealed. In this context, the skills of Carter in typography could be considered as formulated mostly under the influence of typography trends existed in 1960’s in New York (of course his work near his father was an important factor for the development of Carter’s skills in typography).

Carter has been based primarily on earlier designer’s work adding his own style. The value of the work of earlier designers on the development of Carter’s skills can be identified in the case of Galliard, ‘designed for Mergenthaler Linotype in 1978 and based on Robert Granjon’s forms of the mid-16th century, discovered during Carter’s research at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp in the 1950s’ [1]. Generally, it could be stated that ‘Carter’s outstanding knowledge of type and its history has not led him to be fastidious or conservative in his attitude towards the democratisation and instability of type in the digital environment’ [1].

In fact, Carter managed to combine the style of earlier typography designers with his own personal style in order to create a series of fonts that are considered to be unique in terms of the style and the method used for their production. Moreover, Carter has been able to ‘express thought, language and cultural feeling with great immediacy’ [1]. These have been the major characteristics of his style taking into account also the fact that Carter was based a lot on traditions related with typography design.

It should be also noticed that Carter uses ‘a full set of characters including not only different weights and an italic, but ligatures, small capitals, lower-case figures and distinct alphabets for titling and body text’ [1]. These are the elements of Carter’s method as it has been developed throughout the years and under the influence of earlier typography designers. A characteristic example of the work of Carter has been Galliard – which has been already mentioned above. Galliard – as already stated above – ‘was based on Robert Granjon’s forms of the mid-16th century’ [1].

Galliard has been an exceptional example of Carter’s work ‘allowing a text to be completely structured, with its argument physically explicit’ [1] and it is for this reason that this font has been chosen as a standard (by the publishing industry) for ‘academic books, journals and art catalogues ‘. Other examples of Carter’s work are the Verdana and Tahoma fonts which were produced in order to be used by the personal computers industry (especially Microsoft and Apple). Both these fonts are typical of Carter’s style combining the traditional style of writing (presenting letters in a calligraphic format) with the modern style of writing (in terms of the most common features of modern writing).

Because of their aesthetic and their –easy to be read – format the above two fonts have been particularly successful in the computing industry. It seems that – as in the case of Galliard – when designing these two fonts Carter had as a main target to combine the traditional structure of letters with the writing features that characterize the modern era – a target that has been achieved. Works Cited< http://www.designmuseum.org/design/index.php?id=123 > [1] [2]