Matthew Carter wins a MacArthur
I’m really happy to see typographer Matthew Carter receive a well-deserved MacArthur “Genius” Grant. A short video:
Very well put:
I think they’re saying to me, “You’ve done all this work. Well done… Here’s an award, now do more. Do better.” And it’s very nice, at my age, to be told by someone, that “we expect more from you. And here’s the means to help you achieve that.”
And if you’re not familiar with Carter’s name, you know his work: he created both Verdana and Georgia, at least one of which will be found on nearly any web site (the text you’re reading now is Georgia). Microsoft’s commission of these web fonts helped improve design on the web significantly in the mid-to-late 90s. Carter also developed several other important typefaces like Bell Centennial (back in the 70s), the tiny text found in phone books.