Homework #4

Matthew Carter

(www.carterandcone.com/)

Matthew Carter was born in London, England in 1937. Carter has experience in photo-type, metal type, and digital type and has designed an assortment of typefaces. He uses various technologies in creating typefaces and has influenced many designers around the world with his experimental, classical, functionary and decorative typefaces and families for over four decades. After years of interning and freelancing in places such as London and the printing house Ensechede in Haarlem, Netherlands, he found himself in New York as a house designer for Mergenthaler Linotype. He then went back to London in 1971 where he continued to freelance for Linotype and during this period he produced some of this own typefaces such as very technologically advanced and creative Bell Centennial:

Upon innovating this advanced and creative typeface Carter proceeded to establish a digital type foundry called “Bitstream” with three of his former colleagues from Linotype. The company shined and was very successful but left Carter with barely any personal time to design. Carter later helped to co found a company called Carter & Cone Type, Inc.; here he created some of the most famous typefaces including Verdana, the malleable type family for the Walker Art Center, and a serif for Yale University. Carter made a huge dent in the industry and is a huge influence to this day.

Adobe Fonts

(http://www.adobe.com/)

Adobe Fonts is based out of Mountain View, California and began in 1984. Adobe is the leading software for all design, print, photo, and video purposes. Adobe Systems has had a monopoly on the management and processing of computer-based typography since 1982, which obviously gives them a huge advantage in the typography market. Adobe was able to obtain this monopoly due to their innovative and revolutionary PostScript language, which enhanced the form and overall eminence of printing. With adobes upper hand in the design world, with every product that they release they can bundle their own fonts with it and place those with the designers. They come with the program royalty free, so in return, people use them and further increase Adobe’s popularity and reputation within the design world. Adobe began creating its own typefaces under the label Adobe Originals in 1989. Most of these premature designs were just revivals of Garamond, Caslon and soon after new designs included Trajan, Lithos and Chaparral.

Adobe’s introduction of OpenType, Adobe has ported all of its typefaces with expanded glyph sets to support multiple languages. Adobe is the standard and top of the line when it comes to design, not only do they hold all of the top of the line programs, but they are the creators of many great and famous font families. Design wouldn’t be as easy or popular without Adobe’s contribution today.

House Industries

(http://www.houseind.com/)

House Industries was first established by Andy Cruz and Rich Roat, (who formerly had started the Brand Design Co.), in 1993. Their first thoughts were they needed not only to offer a specific service, but they needed their own creative and innovative product to sell that would both promote the company and help give it a brand. Some of the first typefaces that they produced were very visually pleasing with lots of scribble, squiggly, blobby, jagged and loose contours and shapes. The use of color was very sporadic they their illustrations were fun. They tied both this crazy design scheme with their packaging that they sent via mail to promote the new company.

These packages really appealed to the public and were perfect for marketing. Inside of these packages were carefully constructed typefaces specific to a time or culture that House Industries rejuvenated through association or simply by reviving ones from their previous archives. Their work really took on a sort of 60s appeal with its pleasant curvaceous and bubbly design compositions. Some of House Industries most popular typefaces are sans serifs like Neutraface, Chalet, and the innovative OpenType families such as Studio Lettering and Ed Benguiat Fonts. House industries have impacted the design culture and made an influence to all modern designers though they haven’t been in the game that long.