Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter, the creator of typefaces such as Alisal, ITC Galliard, ITC Charter, and more recently, the system fonts Georgia and Verdana for Microsoft, is truly a living typographic legend–and yet his career began almost by chance.

Between graduating from secondary school and beginning his college education he took an internship at the Enschedé type foundry in the Netherlands. The idea was for Carter to rotate through many of the departments in the company, acquiring a basic knowledge of the many facets of the printing and typefounding business. Instead, when Carter arrived at the punch-cutting department, he stayed, learning this craft from P. H. Rädish, one of the masters of the twentieth century. According to Carter, “I’ve been serving a life sentence in type ever since.”

While always involved with type and the making of fonts, Carter’s career has had three distinct periods. For the first twenty-plus years, he worked for others. Initially for Crosfield Electronics, the British manufacturing agent for the Lumitype phototypesetting machine, and then for Mergenthaler Linotype. In the early 1980s, Carter left Linotype to co-found Bitstream Inc.. Because his stint with Bitstream primarily involved building the first independent digital type foundry, Carter spent more time on business matters than on creating new typefaces. In 1991, he left Bitstream and founded Carter & Cone with Cherie Cone. This newest venture is much smaller–and less auspicious–than helping to run a corporation, but it allows Carter the freedom to take on the projects he wants: those that challenge and delight him.

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Typefaces by Matthew Carter