The Digital Typefoundry

Authors

  • Matthew Carter

Abstract

This article is based on a talk given at Stanford University in 1983 at a seminar for the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI). It describes the first all-digital type foundry, Bitstream, established in 1981. Outlines, rasterizing, bitmaps, optical sizes, weight gradations, low resolutions, optical alignment, pixel editing, grayscaling and other processes and problems associated with digital fonts today are discussed in this early, unpublished 1985 essay by one of the founders of Bitstream. We thank the Cary collection for providing scans of the manuscript and images. Charles Bigelow

Author Biography

  • Matthew Carter
    Matthew Carter is a type designer with 60 years' experience in typographic technologies, ranging from hand-cut punches to computer fonts. After a long association with the Linotype companies he was a co-founder of Bitstream Inc. in 1981, a digital type foundry where he worked for ten years. Carter is now a principal of Carter & Cone Type Inc., designers and producers of original typefaces, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Carter's type designs include ITC Galliard, Snell Roundhand and Shelley scripts, Helvetica Compressed, Olympian, Bell Centennial, ITC Charter, Mantinia, Sophia, Big Caslon, Big Moore, Miller, Roster, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Sitka and Carter Sans.

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Published

2016-08-01

Issue

Vol. 50 No. 2 (2016): special issue: reflecting on 50 years of Typograph

Section

Journal Article